


Picket Fence and Rambling Rose

by hello_imasalesman



Series: Dear Hearts and Gentle People [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Sequel, handjobs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2018-05-27 09:51:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6279784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hello_imasalesman/pseuds/hello_imasalesman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Water drips slow and quiet. Charon finds the Jefferson Memorial skin-crawling. And no matter how many times he ducks his head to quietly mumble, "It's not safe here," into Vaultie's ear, he never responds. Charon is too paranoid, and for once, Vaultie is blissfully serene. He runs errands for his father, back and forth between the Memorial and Rivet City. He is, once again, a son. Just a kid, his armor neatly folded and untouched in the corner of the room they all bunk in.</p><p>Charon's not sure when Vaultie forgave his father, or if he ever did.</p><p>Sequel to Dear Hearts and Gentle People. M!LW/Charon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Stockholm sees Charon’s hunched form forty yards out from the town. The shimmer of Vaultie's cloak is indiscernible from that distance to the stale air of the wastes. Lucky Harith spies the two when they approach the gates, shading his eyes as the forms waver into view. He grins at the sight of Vaultie, leaning back against the Brahmin grazing fruitlessly at the ground.

“Look at that, Vault kid’s back." His helmeted head sticks up, like a prairie dog, swiveling around to focus on Harith as if he's not sure if the words were directed towards him or not. "You’ve been gone so long; have any exotic varieties of death you’re looking to sell? Or I’ve got an old rifle that has some choice parts, if you’re interested.”

Vaultie shakes his head, mutters a no thanks that’s too low to be heard by anyone other than Charon. Deputy Weld is also there to greet him at the front gates. And, surprisingly, Sheriff Simms. Charon thinks the man looks ridiculous in his duster; Vaultie finds him brave and he looks at him with the kind of look children look at astronauts and superheroes, almost trips over his feet up the slight incline to Megaton's open gates.

He waits for Vaultie to approach. “Well, I thought Stockholm was just having a heat stroke up there. It is you. We thought you died out there.”

“Not yet,” Vaultie says, reaching up to pull his helmet off. Simm’s eyes fall on the side of his head where Vaultie had rearranged his long, sloppy curls, to hide where the bullets had landed and the constant bandages and stimpack applications had necessitated a shaved patch. “A-almost. We’re okay, though.”

“Glad to see you’re alright.” He says, warmly, giving Vaultie a firm pat on the arm. Charon twitches, automatic. Simms glances up, but doesn’t flinch or give any sign that he noticed. He knows Charon is a little different, but he's always been understanding of ghouls; Harkness and the rest of the council over in Rivet City couldn’t care less about their plight, if it meant a bunch of residents complaining. But they've always welcomed the few who came openly. So he smiles, and nods, directing his gaze towards him, “And you too. That dog of yours has been missing you something fierce, much as Harden loves taking care of him.”

Charon frowns. “He’s not my dog.”

“Sure.” Simms’ eyebrows rise, and he turns to Vaultie. “Good to see you back, kid.” He tilts that Calamity Jane hat towards them both, and heads inside. The wind blows stale through Vaultie's curls, heavy with dust and grease and grime. He glances over at Charon. Deputy Weld's mechanics click and whir as his body turns to follow the two walking into the gate; the doors grind open slowly.

The dust rises thick in the entryway. It rises up to Vaultie's waist, and in the cover he reaches out with curled fingers, brushing the tips against Charon's rough palm. He flexes his hand, a ghost of a hold.  
When the dust settles, they're standing side-by-side.

That’s the extent of welcome home fanfare they get. Sure, all of the usual townspeople say hi and chat Vaultie up longer than usual, but it's nothing special other than the fleeting stares they give towards his unnatural hair. But after each person leaves he looks at Charon with stars in his eyes, and by the time they retire he's so full of excitement he even tires Dogmeat out, bounding around the house. Wadsworth tries to fuss at his hair but he won't sit still long enough, and the scissors whizz awfully close above his head. 

"Charon," he's turning the jukebox on, then crosses over to the Nuka Cola machine in two bounds, the ceiling shaking where his footfalls land. Charon doesn't look up from the bags he has on the floor, where he's pulling out their primary weapons to place on the bench. They've been gone for so long; they have so much to sell, so much to mend. "Charon, what do you want to drink?"

"Water," he grunts, can hear Vaultie's take the steps two at a time down. And then startles as something cold presses to his back. He turns around, brows furrowing at the small, sheepish smile on Vaultie's face as he presses a dark bottle into his hands. Charon looks at it questioningly. 

"It's-- we should celebrate." Vaultie's exhales, bright, watery eyes and nervous fingers ghosting along the worn labels already peeling from condensation. 

Charon frowns. "I don't think you should drink. You're still healing."

Vaultie's hesitates. "Yeah-- but. Yeah. I just." Color rises in his face as Charon experimentally twirls the beer around, then takes a small swig. "I thought. We could. We could, celebrate. A little, for getting back."

Charon nods, slowly. A scant smile crosses his face. "You have to tell me right away if you're in pain."

His eyes shine as he holds out his hand. "O-of course!"

Charon takes both beer from them, sets them next to Vaultie's sniper rifle and his own shotgun on the work bench. He takes Vaultie's hand, next, and the boy moves shyly in towards him as Charon steps out. Their bodies bump together, Vaultie nearly bouncing off of his solid form. 

It feels like the time before cannot even be in the same timeline, the same world; the vault, and Tenpenny, and Mama Dulce's, and even further back the corner of the 9th Circle worn away under Charon's feet. 

Charon pauses. “May I?”

A nervous, high laugh escapes him. “May… you?”

He guides Vaultie, slow and shuffling, through a wobbling circle around the coffee table. His hands feel heavy on his waist. “Kiss you.” Charon says, a little too deadpan. Vaultie laughs again, even higher.

“Th-that’s… you don’t have to ask.”

He moves a hand up, curls rough fingers into the hair at the nape. Vaultie can feel them like weights against his neck; his stomach tightens as Charon leans down, hesitates, and presses a chaste kiss to his lips. 

Their lips move, but it's careful, slow. It's not crass tongues and biting teeth but slow, slow movement, chapped lips rustling against the rough skin of Charon's face, soft wet sounds of their mouths opening, just the tiniest hint of tongue. Vaultie presses forward, curls his body up and into Charon's, his nose practically pressing into his nasal cavity; he chuckles, and Vaultie can feel the rumble buzz up the bridge of his nose.

He laughs back, hides his face shyly against Charon's shoulder. The taller ghoul takes him around, holds him tight.  
This is good. It's too good. Vaultie doesn't know what he's done to deserve this. 

Charon doesn't always know what to make of the closeness. Fondness seeps out of every one of Vaultie's pores. He is hopelessly in love, though he only feels safe enough to say it in the dark, when his words will get swallowed up by the night and absorbed by the crook of Charon's neck.

He doesn't know if he can feel love. Charon doesn't know. He's not sure what it is, exactly. Vaultie says it's not something to command, that it truly can't come from ant pheromones or skunked cans of beer, but he remembers, dully, some of the other yeniceris and their adoration towards the Chairman and their direct charge. Vaultie has adored him for some time; it's simply gotten louder.

Megaton does not keep them long. This time, they take Dogmeat. They take extra ammo. They take too much, until their packs are laden with so much nonsense Charon barely bites his tongue. Vaultie talks about his father in warm, familial terms, bright-eyed and hopeful. It's like he's full to bursting with it all. Teenage hopes and dreams. He's in love, and he is loved back, and Charon doesn't have to ask to know the scene and his stage directions in all this. He wants to help his Father and they're going to move to Rivet City, eventually. They're going to be a perfect little family, the kind Vault-Tec had always promised that he would have.

Oddly, they don't slink across the open wastes. It's abnormal, when they're so vulnerable out in the open, so far from the shade of the skeletal remains of skyscrapers. They walk, straight backed. Vaultie hums. Charon's chest aches at the sight of him; he has, possibly, never been happier then at this moment in time. He has his own opinions about James slowly forming. It's strange to care about something enough to have a solid opinion, something that wasn't an immediate in his peripheral.

"We're you going to become a scientist in the vault?"

Vaultie pauses, tilts his head. "Dad... He was a doctor. Just a doctor." His face crinkles. "I got, uhm-- jukebox. Jukebox technician on my G.O.A.T." He smiles, a little bashful. "That's-- you start there, go up. Become Vault Technician. Dad wanted me to be a physician, but--"

Vaultie laughs, high with nerves as he scratches idly as the pink skin of his scalp, the puckered mark of healing wounds. "Used to be afraid of blood." From the look on his face, he seems to be heavily considering if he should be feeling shame or want to laugh; but Charon understands, things were soft underground. He doesn't begrudge him of it. "But, I'm, uh-- I'm good with robots and s-stuff." He looks over at Charon, words tumbling out fast. "I should be able to help. With the machines, the purifier. N-not-- probably not the hard science." 

Dogmeat is a good dog. The master before him had trained him well, better than a ghoul who had never owned an animal and a boy who had never seen anything living past a radroach for the majority of his life. He can sense the anxiety in his voice and he eases up beside him, heeled perfectly to his side. He noses up against Vaultie's limp hand until he scratches behind his ear. They're silent, save the sound of their overburdened packs; which, considering the bulk of what they're carrying, isn't quiet in the least.

"If you could have grown up, and, been anything... Would you?" Charon catches the flush on his cheeks, head ducked low to concentrate on his feet. "Or, I mean-- what would you? You be?"

Charon laughs, quiet, shifts the straps of his pack on his shoulders. "I have never known anything else." And he despises thinking in the abstract. There's no pleasure in pointless what-ifs. What if his past wasn't his past? The thought of having grown up like Vaultie, much less even a wastelander, or a pre-war ghoul, gives him a headache with how far reaching it would be. But then, he wouldn't be himself, for good or for ill. He indulges him, nonetheless-- "A caravan bodyguard."

That's easy to imagine. Not too different-- "That's what you do now!"

Charon looks mildly amused. "But I'd have a Brahmin."

Vaultie lets out a laugh, his nose pink. Shakes his head, his limp curls bouncing around his face. Charon talks, in a low voice and slow words, about the Brahmin of before, the cows that were in his textbooks, with their long hair and large hooves and only one head. Same sweet, gentle eyes. Sometimes, when passing through a village, they would take one. Sweet, gentle eyes, and flicking ears and swatting tail. He could still butcher a Brahmin, but it was harder with two throats. "You sound like you really like them."

Charon hooks his thumb into the straps of his knapsack. "... I suppose."

They walk. Charon cannot remember any fondness. Thinking back, he likes them. But at the time, they were another task. Slaughtering and draining their blood, aiding the army chefs in anything they needed for dinner. He shrugs, too late, noncommittally

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :> so, the start of the sequel. I can't guarantee constant updates but I do have 10k words in the doc, so that's a good sign. comments and kudos, as always, are so appreciated they make me want to cry.


	2. Water

Vaultie waves his hand over the shallow pool of rainwater that has collected in the soft earth. His pip-boy clicks when he dips low; even here, amongst the green, radiation has still leeched into the water. Still, he sticks his hand into the water, just to feel the mud underneath, the soft squelch of it through his fingers. It's dirty, but somehow feels a little cleaner here.

Charon watches Vaultie roll onto his back, extending his hands above himself to marvel at the mud clinging to his hands, the leaves above. A drop nearly hits him in the face, and he inhales sharply in surprise, quickly rubbing his hands onto the lush grass below him. He remembers green, if vaguely, though being here makes Charon's temples throb with the threat of a migraine. He pushes the back of his skull against the tree, trying to dig the bark in hard enough to keep his mind focused.

Charon mutters, unprompted, "It didn't look this good before the war"

Vaultie reaches up to snag a small leaf attached to a tender branch; he rubs it between his fingers, trying to memorize the feel of its surface, the veins of it. He hasn't been able to keep his hands still with all of the new stimuli; there's dirt caked under his fingertips from everything he's touched. It's not like when he first came above, fueled by adrenaline and fear. Oasis is calm and protected, and everything smells like wet grass and wood chips. "Really?"

"Yes. Nature wasn't precious or conserved." Charon's eyes follow Vaultie as he flops back onto a patch of grass, his curls tangling. The stark green halos his face, almost making him look sick with how pale he has become. Everything here is stark and healthy; the two of them look ill-placed amongst it, irradiated and sun-deprived. He reaches back and over his head to dig his fingers into the ground, anchoring himself into the earth. "Here or abroad. Didn't go as fast as the oil, but every resource was pushed to the breaking point. Water was scarce. Famines were common."

Vaultie's fingers flex in the dirt. He watches the leaves above, the light dappled over his face, looking thoughtful. "Wasn't it... I thought it was supposed to be good," Vaultie murmurs, pulling up blades of grass, "Back then."

Charon's laugh is dry, "You would assume."

\--

It is summer in the wasteland. The only difference in the Capital between summer and any of the other seasons is that the humidity is thickest, and the skies will suddenly swell with constant, irradiated rain at a moment's notice. Vaultie lets Charon know that he learned in his class before the war, and many other wars, D.C. was a swamp, marshes full of soft ground and unfarmable land and murky waters. Charon wonders why a country would build its capital in a swamp; but even then, mankind liked to fight with nature. He had never personally experienced supermarkets laden with frozen foods and out of season produce, but he'd seen the dog eared magazines of house wives that Vaultie collected and stuffed in his bookshelves. He does miss air conditioning. They both do; or, Vaultie misses the perfect Vault-controlled space he once called home, cool and dry. There's no place to escape the heat, other than the metro tunnels.

They escort Moira to the edge of the Potomac river, and scout for any noticeable Mirelurks. Charon throws one grenade into the water, and while they cover their ears and turn away, it explodes in a shower of water, but no bodies surface afterwards. "All clear then, right?" She says cheerfully, eyes bright as she balances a clipboard in her arms. "Okay, then! Adam, you've taken your rad-x, right?"

"Yup!" Vaultie beams, "But, uh. You know, ever since that experiment, I haven't needed as much?"

"Oh, really?" Moira sucks in a breath, her voice coming out like the sharp exhale of a balloon. Together, their blind optimism makes Charon feel like he's staring at the sun. "That's great news! I was really worried all you got out of it was that toe on your back."

"Oh, Doc Church took that... off."

"Even better!" Moira claps a hand against the back of her clipboard. "Okay then, strip!"

She had gotten the idea from Charon, though he hadn't purposefully offered. Craterside offered some shade and the ability to resupply out of the heat, but the walls kept the humidity bottled in. Vaultie's sweat-slicked forehead thumped against his back as Charon counted out the transaction, one bottle cap at a time. They plinked against the counter, and memory resurfaced as they rolled towards Moira. Charon doesn't remember swimming pools, like the ones Gob talks about almost reverently when the heat of the mid-day sun makes the stale piss smell roll off Moriarity's bar in waves. He remembers rivers, like this one, though they were black not from the soil but the trash that flowed down it, but either way they were a wonderful escape from the heat, if only momentarily.

Charon blinks, then turns to Vaultie. Moira is not his employer, but the blunt cheerfulness of her voice nearly brings his hands to the first clasp of his leather armor. He had assumed they would be keeping watch on the shores while Moira ran experiments and tests. "What?"

Vaultie's eyes are anywhere but Charon. A light breeze is blowing his sticky curls across his face. He will need to cut his hair soon, if he wants to fit his head comfortably into his helmet. He's already starting on the zipper of his Vault suit. "Well, uh. Moira needs our help with a new Survival Guide issue she's doing--"

"Water Aerobics for Ghouls!" Moira interrupts quickly, "See, most people don't know how to swim. Except, ghouls! Since, you know... the whole living before the debilitating water radiation really made it easy for you guys to learn!" She flips her clipboard around, so Charon can see the chickenscratch figures she's drawn onto it. Ghouls, in pre-war beach outfits, with bonnets and sunglasses lounging by the water. He had thought she had been taking notes. "What better way to teach people the skills then by those who know it the best?"

She wiggles the picture at Charon. He heaves out a sigh. When he glances back at Vaultie, he's already down to his boxers, wobbling on one foot to remove his boots he had forgotten to take off first. He wavers in place, momentarily suspended, before stumbling backwards onto two feet, his vault flopping noisily against the grainy sand of the bank.

Charon sighs, rubbing at his face. "I barely remember how to swim."

"But you know?" Moira says, hedging her bets, face brightening.

"It's been years."

Vaultie falls backwards as he finally pulls off his first boot, letting out a quiet "oof" as he falls to the sand.

"But you know?" Moira's voice rises at the end, crinkling in Charon's ears. "It's for the good of the Wasteland! Barely anyone knows how to swim except pre-war ghouls."

"That's true... Uhm. Maybe some fishermen might know." Vaultie says, his voice sounding small coming from the ground. He tucks his socks into his shoes, and immediately buries his toes into the sand.

He watches Charon's face, but it's just as impassive, bordering on stormy as usual. He looks back down, pushing his toes into the coarse, cool sand. "You can tell me how from the shore. I-I thought," His tongue thickens in his mouth, "Thought I explained-- maybe not. Maybe... sorry."

Charon's knees bump into Vaultie's side. "I know. But..." He sighs, extending out a hand towards Vaultie, "It will help."

"Are you sure? You don't have to." He takes Charon's hand, curls his fingers tight against his skin.

Small gestures. Neither of them are very good at talking, but Charon curls his fingers over his knuckles, and holds his hand a little too long. Moira doesn't notice; she only focuses on certain things, and near-shy touches don't even begin to enter the hemisphere of her thought. When they pull away, Charon starts to disrobe, methodically unhooking the piling up each piece of his armor next to Vaultie's, folding carefully and precise along the seams. Vaultie patiently waits, and watches. He undresses like the soldiers in the tents in Anchorage, quick and efficient.

Charon wades in first, with no fear in the broad plain of his back or the gentle swing of his arms. It's not until he's up to his knees before Vaultie follows suit. The cold is shocking, especially compared to the sticky heat that had refused to dissipate even stripped down, and goosebumps are shooting up his spine. Silt is sticking cold and almost slimy between his toes, the occasional sharp rock or debris pricking at the sole's of his feet. Vaultie wades in up to his knees, and stops, abruptly. For Charon, it's barely mid-calf. He keeps going deeper, his eyes focused on the impenetrable brackish water.

"Is it safe?"

Charon glances over his shoulder. "Safe enough. I've never seen Mirelurks swim this far up undetected." They're fast, agile swimmers, but not in water this shallow, and never particularly sneaky. Some are the height of Charon, and three times as wide; and though they're not near any clutches, even the hatchlings couldn't do much more than try and slash at their heels. "You'll see them in the water if they approach."

"And I have your back!" Moira calls helpfully from the shore. Charon's eyelid twitches, but he turns around. The water smoothly ripples around his body as he wades in backwards, his focus on Vaultie.

Wringing his hands, Vaultie watches him. He doesn't seem comfortable, but he's not rigid, either, sliding back easily into the murky waters. Momentarily, he dips, knees buckling to sink him even further down. The water creeps up, past his thighs, his waist, all the way up to his collar bone. It looks strange. He's never seen him use the tub past a quick, thorough scrub, and even if he had, Charon's gigantic frame would have never fit entirely in the small basin.

"Are you coming?"

Vaultie exhales, swallows. "You won't let me drown?"

"I won't." It's not, I can't. And that makes his feet move, carefully, shuffling, pulling up even more dirt and sand to further obfuscate the waters.

Charon pops back up, wades in even deeper. His arms are outstretched, leading Vaultie carefully in by his wake, untouching. Waist high on Charon is even deeper on Vaultie, and as the coldness creeps up, he feels his chest tightening. It's not just the radiation, prickling insistent even eating two Rad-X's wrapped with cave mold. The feeling of submerging is foreign enough; the Vault never had baths, too wasteful and grimy compared to showers.

Reaching out, Charon leaves palm upturned, near Vaultie. He takes it.

"Alright," Moira calls from the shore, "So, swimming basics!" She's scratching dutifully away at her pad of paper, though whether she's writing down what Charon is reciting in a clipped monotone or drawing more figures it's impossible to tell from this far away. Vaultie is a good student. He does what Charon tells him to, basic dog paddle, keeping his head afloat, ways to stay alive if suddenly in water too deep to stand.

They don't go that far out, though. The physical exertion, and the light radiation, even with the rad-x, is exhausting. Vaultie stands on wobbling bird legs, his curls hanging wet around his face. 

"You want to stay calm. Bodies float, even prior to death."

"Th-that's not reassuring."

Charon's eyebrows rise. "It's true. Pull your feet up."

Vaultie does as he's told; first one, then the other, and suddenly the water is rushing up to his chin, and his legs shoot back down again to ground him. Charon presses the flat of his palm to his lower back, pushing forward. "Feet up."  
Vaultie does it again. This time, Charon supports him. "Put your arms out."

They snap out so fast he jabs Charon right in the stomach; the ghoul winces, but makes no other indication, even as Vaultie's hand retracts back and he mutters apologies. "Lean back. Trust me. You'll float."

Vaultie leans back, into Charon's arms. From the shoreline, he catches a glimpse of Moira craning her neck to watch before he starts to lower himself back. Her eyes are darting, the kind of manic expression on her face indicative of an experiment going right, recognition coming through in her voice, "Floating is important, when you're too tired to swim?"

Vaultie leans into his chest, and Charon keeps his hands on his shoulders as he moves back, dips the boy down into the water. It prickles cold against his skin, up his spine, the back of his neck. "Exactly." Charon's voice rumbles from his chest. Vaultie's head slides into the water; it sluices into his ears, making Charon's voice sound warbled and very far away. From this angle, he can see the hard flat plane of Charon's sternum, his adam's apple taught against his skin and the slope of his neck to his chin. He exhales, and though his body dips, the tips of Charon's fingers brush against his back and he keeps calm. "If you get tired, just float."

\--

Water drips slow and quiet. Charon finds the Jefferson Memorial skin-crawling. It has been secured-- by them-- and the super mutants camp across the road has been exterminated-- by them-- and still a sense of dread fills him.

Maybe it is Li's stern face that he always catches staring at Vaultie, or the kind wrinkles that cradle impassive eyes on his father's face. He has resigned himself to the fact that he simply doesn't like doctors, or scientists. Too many memories of checkups and training, measurements and grading for tests he did not know the answers for. Project Purity doesn't seem to be at a loss for them; Janice Kaplinski and Alex Dargon and other pinched faces with so much self-importance they have a first and last name embroidered on their lab coats in curling script.

And no matter how many times he ducks his head to quietly mumble, "It's not safe here," into Vaultie's ear, he never responds. Charon is too paranoid, and for once, Vaultie is blissfully serene. He runs errands for his father, back and forth between the Memorial and Rivet City, along the water and through the dank marble hallways of the memorial itself. He is, once again, a son. Just a kid, his armor neatly folded and untouched in the corner of the room they all bunk in.

Charon's not sure when Vaultie forgave his father, or if he ever did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slowly picking up steam... Thanks again for comments everyone. <3


	3. Chapter 3

"Is it safe?" They had cleaned out the Jefferson Memorial previously, but Vaultie does not tell his Father this and Charon never asks. He does not need to take ownership of the carnage, and never has. He just smiles, and when his Father clearly hesitates, he ducks his head sheepishly.

"It's fine, Dad. It's safe."

They walk all of the sullen scientists and engineers out of the Science Lab. Vaultie falls into step with his father, and Charon brings up the rear, his shotgun cradled in his arms.

Charon does not comment, because he was not requested to do so. But still, strangely, James slows his step to glance back at him. "Is it safe?"

Its as if he does not see the sniper rifle, nearly the entire height of Vaultie, strapped across his back. Vaultie's face does not change. To him, it is seen as his father being accommodating, of wanting Charon's input, also; but he's good, and sweet, and does not hear condensation the way Charon can. He only hears a man who does not believe in his son's ability.

He almost tells him to talk to Adam, but the familiarity of such a phrase leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Charon shifts his pack on his shoulder. "It is safe."

James nods, once. "Good." He keeps his gaze on Charon, and Charon doesn't lower his. His hand raises, almost as if to pat Charon on the shoulder, but then stops and veers awkwardly back to his side. "I never got to thank you for keeping my son out of harms way."

Charon exhales from his nose. He doesn't keep James' gaze.

"You do not need to thank me."

\---

Outside on the catwalks of the Memorial, Vaultie looks very bare without his armor. The sun is setting heavy on the horizon, syrupy colors of irradiated sky dripping out and onto the water.

Charon steps behind Vaultie, uneasily shifting from foot to foot. Vaultie glances over his shoulder and up; immediately, his lips twist into a small smile.

Charon feels unease creep up his throat. "Where's your rifle?"

He blinks up owlishly. "Inside." He pats at a silenced 10mm in the holster on his hip. If Charon wasn't mistaken, the same one that he had given his father before they left the Smith Casey's Garage. The safety's clicked off but it's not cocked. Charon sighs through his nostrils.

"That won't protect you in the case of Mirelurks or Super Mutants. I'll stay out here."

Vaultie opens his mouth, and then closes it again. He only speaks when he turns his face out towards the river. "Is that why you're out here?"

Charon grunts. Vaultie has his legs through the railing. If something were to sneak up on him, it would be too unwieldy for him to get up in any time to react properly. His feet swing aimlessly. "Partially."

He doesn't ask for specifics. As good as Vaultie is, he's only been with him for so long, and with normal human beings for much longer; he forgets that questions are commands. Innocent queries turn into enforced tell-alls. But Charon has been around for a long, long time, and he has felt his inner processes start to relax since Mama Dolce's. He knows he can give a roundabout answer, and Vaultie will not press, will not anger.

He moves a little closer, his knees touching the backs of Vaultie's shoulder blades.

"You could sit next to me. If. If you want."

Charon turns his head away. "I couldn't protect you--"

"We're safe, Charon." Vaultie interrupts; not forceful, but a sudden burst, his voice going reedy as his name tumbles out of his mouth. The adrenaline of plainly speaking carries the rest of his words out like an avalanche: "You don't like my dad, do you?"

"I do not." Charon admits freely. He sucks in a quiet breath. "And I should not dislike him. He has not done any wrong by me." The silence after is startling. Vaultie sucks in an audible breath, and even then, it stretches and hangs.

"But."

Charon hesitates, before reaching down to touch Vaultie's hair. He threads his fingers carefully through his greasy curls, careful of the tangles and knots. Vaultie's hair is a mess, half of the curls too long and the other half tight and scraggly, just starting to grow; he has a fringe that has fallen in front of his face. He leans back into his touch. "I do not know much about family." It is a sorry statement to make, entirely noncommittal, and Vaultie is poor at hiding his emotions, the way his face visibly contorts to swallow it down. When Vaultie reaches up, to grasp his calf and tap out a request, Charon acquiesces and eases himself down. He can truly remember every year he's been on earth when his muscles protest and his knees creak as he lowers himself to sit on the cold catwalks. It somehow seeps through the layers of leather and cloth of his clothes.

In contrast, Vaultie's body pressed to his side is shockingly warm. The vault suits are lead-lined, but still, Charon wonders if he's cold. Vaultie bumps the side of his face, his forehead, to Charon's shoulder. And then his neck. He doesn't feel cold; his nose is warm and soft against his skin.

"Isn't this nice?"

Charon grunts. "Well. It's not safe, sitting here."

Vaultie sucks in a sharp huff. "I mean..." He sounds shyly amused. He nudges at Charon's jaw with his nose, "This."  
Charon blinks. It is nice, in a way, now that he thinks about it. "We have not had much time..." He cannot say, just us.

Because that's all they usually are is together. But it was so often in the context of a mission, traveling from one danger to the other. Their touches, though increasingly growing fond, were still messages to be conveyed. "I do... I think I do enjoy this."

There's a hum, near his pulse point. Which turns into lips on his neck, lightly vibrating, just barely brushing against his skin. A kiss, the soft sound of it making Charon shiver. "Is this..? Okay?"

"Yes," he grunts, his voice going tight as Vaultie continues to kiss at the spot. He closes his eyes and can see the brightness of the sunset behind his eyes. He's not hesitant any longer, traveling up; when he reaches the curve of his jaw, his teeth scrape clumsily against the skin, and Charon's hands jump. "You did not hurt me," he preemptively murmurs, voice strangled, finding himself leaning in closer. Vaultie exhales against his skin. And he does it again.

Charon settles his hands on the curve of Vaulties waist, lets his fingers fall heavy enough that he can feel the pressure points. There is something about teeth to his neck, the pressure of it there, chased by lips and tongue, that is sending frissures through his body. It's the combination of the feel and the soft sounds of Vaultie's lips moving, excited little exhales, and Charon finds himself finally turning his head to kiss him on the lips. Stolen kisses is all they've managed in a while, and he wants-- this, his mouth sweet and pliant, the sudden hands gripping the leather belts at the front of his armor, this is what he wants. It still shocks him, that he wants anything as much. Not just physical, but to tangle his hands in his hair, and to aid him past any contractual duties. Things that he wants, that benefit him in no tangible way.

Charon's shoulders jolt at the sound of faraway splashing. They part; Charon looks out onto the water, though it's hard to tear his eyes from Adam's face, lips pink and slightly swollen, his eyes wide. There's another splashing sound, out in the distance. Charon pulls himself up, using the railing for support. He bodily hefts Vaultie to his feet after him; he moves in a trance, slowly blinking away a smile.

"We should go inside."

"R-really? Yeah-"

He has to do a double take towards Vaultie's dopey smile. "Not like that." Charon amends, "The mirelurks are coming out."  
Vaultie's face falls. "Oh. Right. Uh."

"Later." He grunts, "If we have time--" Vaultie is standing too close. He huffs, pulls him in by the side of his head, and kisses him quick against his scalp.

\--

At the beginning of the second and last day back in the Vault, months after they've left Megaton, a few scant weeks after they arrived in the Citadel, Vaultie takes Charon by the hand and winds him through the claustrophobic halls. When he turns the corner, he almost expects to see Butch and Paul Hannon standing there, except Butch is back in the infirmary with Amata and Paul is dead.

The classroom is how they left it yesterday, the chairs and desks overturned and in disarray. Mrs. Palmer is sitting quietly in the corner, reading over a dogeared textbook as Brotch putters anxiously between the chalkboard and the bookshelves. He almost looks as if he's about to question what Adam is doing here, still, but he takes one look at Charon's stony face and refrains, his mouth silently closing. Adam barely notices the exchange; he's come here for a reason, something that has been nagging at him for a long while. He is dead-set, moving easily from memory towards the back of the class, honing in on a bookshelf behind Brotch's desk. He runs his fingers over the spines of books and binders that have been collecting dust since his classes' graduation and the Vault's slow, sad retirement of the education system. There had been no other children. It had only been a few months after his graduation that his Father had left, but even then, the Vault had been buzzing with worry.

He makes a noise of recognition as he pulls one of the thickest binders on the shelf out. Dust cakes his fingertips. "I'm going to read the questions out loud," He says, already flipping through the plastic-protected pages. He seats himself on top of Brotch's desk, unthinking. As dirty and chaotic as the Vault had become, it looks out of place for Vaultie to be perched up there; but the Wasteland, that's already crept through him, taken some of the Vault out of him. He would have never sat, legs akimbo and binder sitting inbetween, on top of any desk before. From the corner of her eye Old Lady Palmer shoots him a second glance. "Since... since you can't read, and all." Fingers hesitating, he silently looks up for some sort of confirmation.

Charon rights a fallen chair, sitting down across from Vaultie, his movements slow and careful. "And what is this?"

Vaultie's flying fingers pause. "It's..." He pulls the binder up to his chest, almost secretive, chewing his bottom lip. "It's just a test. We can see. Remember? We can see what you could've-- could've been."

Charon's eyes fall to the cartoon of the boy trying to harness a goat. He has probably seen goats before, remembers them in some way. Vaultie leans over, grabbing a piece of scrap paper and a wayward pencil.

"Are you ready?"

The chair creaks as Charon leans back in it, and nods.

Vaultie would have liked to have been a teacher; he likes reading, he likes learning. Children scared him, or maybe it was only because he was a child when he was with other children. But considering they never really delighted Brotch, he's sure it's not an actual prerequisite to the career. It didn't matter, really; as soon as Brotch had handed him his test back with "jukebox technician" written in red pen at the top, he had started his apprenticeship under Stanley. He had learned some, but hadn't gotten far in training before his father left.

Charon's body shifts in his chair that is just slightly too small. Vaultie's eyes light up as he reads, in a clipped, matter-of-fact tone from the binder: "You are approached by a frenzied Vault scientist, who yells, 'I'm going to put my quantum harmonizer in your photonic resonation chamber!' What's your response?"

When Vaultie glances up, Charon's hairless brows have made their way halfway up his forehead. "I would..." He starts slow, blinking, "Neutralize the threat."

"There are no wrong answers." He reassures with a smile. Charon's lips twitch into something like a smile.

"Did you take this?" He gestures at the binder.

Vaultie nods, scribbling on a piece of scrap paper. "Everyone does when they're 16. I got--"

"Jukebox technician." The corner of Charon's eyes crinkle, "I remember now."

Vaultie flushes pink. "I-- yeah." His eyes fall back to the binder, suddenly acutely aware that they are not the only ones in here.

The questions are easy enough, and he's starting to remember them as he goes through them. Some take more explaining for Charon than others. "You made the Vault 101 baseball team!" He can see where 'one of' used to be tucked between the letters, crossed out like the others. They didn't even have enough children to make a full, regulation team when he was growing up, let alone two. "Which position do you prefer?"

Charon scrunches his face. "Baseball? Isn't that Enclave?"

"Oh, no!" His eyes go wide as he leans forward, binder nearly slipping off his lap, "It's a game. You know, baseball bats? You can hit things with them, and in the game, someone throws the ball, you hit a ball and then the people on the edge of the room, they tried to catch it, and hit you with it, before you ran around the bases."

"Hit you with it?"

Vaultie frowns, "That might have-- that wasn't really, the official rule, but Butch usually-- and Jonas wasn't always watching really good." Charon looks thoroughly unconvinced. "But it was fun! Kind of. I didn't like it much, back then."

Charon frowns, "Well. If I were to play this game, I would rather be the one to throw things. I have superior aim and depth of field perception compared to my ability to run, and can often get grenades into a target area."

Vaultie blinks, then nods. "That's..." He hesitates over the book, and then writes down the corresponding letter for his answer. "Alright. Uh. Grenades are similar, okay."

It's fun to ask Charon questions like these; now looking back, he realizes that they are silly, that they don't seem to correspond to much in particular. Maybe they would have been applicable to life before the war, but none of the questions really mattered in the vault, and they have nothing to do with the wasteland at all. On the scoring sheet, things have been crossed out and penned back in by hands that have long since been reduced to ash in the Vault crematorium. Jobs that have been retired, or renamed, or replaced. The midwife track was rerouted to the doctor one; wasteland explorer crossed out over and over until Vaultie can just barely parse the words past the angry black ink.

Vaultie checks his paper, comparing the answers to the guide. He checks it twice.

"Well?"

Vaultie swallows. "Medical track." He glances up, an uneasy smile growing on his face. "You could have been... oh! You could have been a doctor, too."

Also, like his father. He switches between the scrap paper with his chicken scratch, back to the answer guide, back again. "Or, oh. Maybe an animal doctor! Veterinarian, I think?" He says, then adds, "Not in here. We don't have animals. But outside... for Brahmin." His voice trails off in a broken warble at the end, fingers digging into the edge of the laminated pages. They're old, and yellowed, and frail underneath his hands. Something sits low and heavy in Vaultie's gut, brought on suddenly. Guilt. He feels guilty, and a keen sense of loss, thinking of another time and life, ifs upon ifs upon ifs; if, Charon had grown up in the Vault, unscarred by radiation, and war. If Charon had been not pre-war, but-- here. Born in the Vault, probably, unlike him. Pristine and unharmed, something new. Vaultie can picture him, with his shock of red hair, and still with the same rheumy blue eyes, a murky sky on the fringes of a storm. Still impossibly tall, ducking under the low doorways of the Vault. A future Vault Doctor, too. Prestigious. The only reason that Adam had grown up in the Vault had been because they had needed a doctor so desperately.

If Charon would have even wanted to have been his friend, or would he have been swayed by Butch and the other Tunnel Snakes, peacocking around in leather jackets found in old off-limits supply closets. If only they had grown up together, instead of Charon standing in the corner of Azhrukhal's bar until his feet wore down into the floorboards, if they could have stayed underground forever, if--

Charon's hand is heavy on his shoulder, sliding to his arm. Vaultie startles under its weight, his body jumping, mind fizzling. The binder falls loudly to the floor. "Hey."

Vaultie swallows. He wants to cry, but he doesn't. He swallows again. "Hey."

"It's not a notion I dwell on. The past, in general."

Vaultie's heart clenches. "I'm sorry?" It comes out like a question without him meaning to. Charon's laugh is little more than a sharp exhale through his nose.

"Why?"

"I don't know," Vaultie admits. "Are you happy? Wait-" Charon's mouth hangs open, "You don't have to answer. I'm-- sorry. Sorry." He's running out of breath for his words. He can feel Brotch's stare at the back of his head. "I shouldn't have. Done this."

"It's fine," Charon shakes his head.

"I just." Vaultie starts, and stops. The other Charon, the dream Charon, is handsome and tall and kind, and has never seen a day or war, has only held a gun once or twice when shooting errant rad roaches in the lowest levels of the Vault. But he doesn't want that Charon for himself, because he has a smooth face, or clear eyes. He wants it for Charon. He wants him-- to be happy, and good, and he's not sure if that's a bad thing, if that would erase what Charon was now in the first place.

Charon is watching him. Not demanding, but quietly waiting. The words sift through Vaultie's mind and slide out, too slippery to catch with his teeth or lips. He wants to suck out all of the bad, like poison from a wound, and he'd swallow it down and contaminate himself if he had to. But he takes Charon's rough, larger hand, and somehow folds it between his own fingers, holds him tight. "I like you just the way you are." He says. "I'm sorry. I just want... It all. To be okay." The words fail, again. His shoulders barely manage to shrug.

Charon takes his free hand, and covers Vaultie's with it. They need to leave soon. Amata had given them the night, but the thought of staying any longer sounds even worse than having to crawl back into the sun. Allen Mack's body is cooling upstairs. Charon had offered to carry the corpse down to the furnace for Vaultie, but Amata had said that they had done enough trouble. It's his home, too, he had wanted to say. It's been shy of a year and a half, and already, he is an unwelcome stranger.

"The future is going to be good, th-though."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hoping to have the next chapter next Monday... It's almost entirely finished and I have everything lined out until chapter 10 so hopefull much quicker posting from here!


	4. Chapter 4

  
For some reason, Vaultie had expected leaves and fresh dirt and grass to be more comfortable. In their fourth day at Oasis, he's starting to come to terms with the fact that these things are just as sharp and hard as the rest of the world. Maybe a little cleaner. It's a nice excuse, though, to shift the straw-stuffed bed closer to Charon. With his usual sleeping bag over top, it's not too bad. And he's realized he doesn't mind the smell of fresh dirt, of grass. Combined with the smell of Charon, it smells natural and heady. A kind of smell that wouldn't be particularly pleasant if it wasn't so familiarly engrained in his head, but it's safe and it's his.

"What are you doing tomorrow?" Charon asks him in soft tones. He combs his thick fingers through his hair, extra careful not to snag on the curls, but to slowly and patiently work them out. It's easy to get lost in each other like this. They are sleeping in the grove, with the other Treeminders, curled away together in a far corner.

"I don't know. Going into the cave." Vaultie falls silent.

Charon's breathing is a just-audible wheeze in the silence. His blunt nails feel good against his scalp. "And Bob?"  
Vaultie goes rabbit-still. Charon pauses his scratching. "I don't know."

Charon hums out a sigh, "I think..." He stops. It is still strange for him, to supplement opinions. His own actual feelings, and not yes-sirs to quiet whomever was asking the fastest. It's hard to think of his feelings and ideas as opinions, and not simply unnecessary thoughts, needless complications towards his duty and keeping himself and others alive. "I believe that we should encourage the growth."

"Really?"

Charon watches the leaves above his head. He wonders if Bob, or Harold, can hear them. "The needs of the many outweigh those of the few."

Vaultie sits up, very sudden, knocking Charon's hand out quick enough that it catches and snaps too hard through a knotted curl. He doesn't have time to wince, just to hiss; his face was twisted even before his eyes were watering from the stinging pain. "You don't really believe that, do you?" His voice is just bordering on too loud for the open clearing they're sleeping in; nearby Treeminders shift on their cots.

He blinks, slowly. "Should I not?"

"No. N-no. It's just-- ah." Vaultie deflects, his voice lowering, slowly easing himself back down. Lying on his side, he moves in close, so that his nose is nearly touching Charon's sternum; conversations are easier talking into his breast bone than looking into his eyes. "I don't mean to, uh. Wrong? Your opinion? It's just-- well. If it's better to hurt one person to help others, doesn't that make...?"

"There is the potential to reintroduce growth into the wasteland. As..." He tries to find the word in his mouth, "Ridiculous and unlikely as it sounds, it could help." Charon pauses, "Aren't you the one who usually does this?"

Vaultie huffs out a laugh; his breath is hot against his skin. "What? Helping?"

Charon snorts. "Defend dangerous and selfless optimistic plans."

"Yeah. I mean... my plans aren't. They're not. But." His tongue is fast getting tied up; he huffs against Charon's chest, his forehead thumping in defeat against him. "You didn't answer my question."

Charon sounds genuinely confused, albeit in his usual flat tone. "No?"

"No. If..." He pulls back. "If we do a big good thing, but hurt someone in the process... And if-- well. What... you've gone through. That goes by that." His voice lowers, "That one person doesn't matter. I think- I think people matter, a lot. I think-- I think that's important."

Charon feels his lips curling at the corners without his consent. "You are too optimistic for this world. Maybe even the prior world."

Vaultie sighs, "But it's true. People matter. One person... can change a lot."

"Then stop the growth," Charon says, eyebrows raised placidly, "Or drive a stake through his heart. Burn him down."

"Charon!" He whisper-shouts. The leaves shiver above their heads.

"You realize, you bring us into these situations." He eases his hand back into Vaultie's hair, soothing over where he had accidentally caused pain before. "We could leave."

"But. We can't. If we left--"

"Things would be as they were. Our inaction would cause nothing but things to continue on." He pauses, "No choices made by us."

Vaultie taps his fingers to Charon's side. Nothing concrete, just idle motions. "Choosing is... We should choose."

There is the sound of someone rolling over, and pushing themselves up to their knees. Charon goes rigid until they pass, their legs stirring dead leaves and blades of grass. Vaultie tucks himself against his form, pressing close, pressing his face hard enough into his chest Charon's sure his skin will leave an imprint on his forehead. When the person passes, they relax, Vaultie pulling back to peek up at him. Charon is looking down, back at him. He exhales slow, the frayed vestigial edges of nostril minutely moving with his breathing. 

\--

Charon crams Vaultie up against the wall. Not hasty, not aggressive; but he is bigger than him, and it is easy to box his frame, easy to push him into place with little might behind his movements. He takes his arms, pins them above Vaultie's head; when he leans in to urgently kiss him, and lick his mouth open soft and sweet, he melts pliable against his frame, whines like something being slowly deflated. His hands curl, fingertips brushing against Charon's rough knuckles, squeezing.

"Calm down," He murmurs against his mouth, quiet, where each word is hungrily swallowed by Vaultie, "take your time,"

"I can't," His body rolls off the wall in waves, "I can't."

But he can. Charon knows he can. Vaultie drowns against him and he just wants him to breath. To take care of himself, before he burns up, sharp against his lips, choking on carbon. Charon kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him; his dry, thin lips dragging and catching where Vaultie's are chapped. Charon lets go of his wrists, putting his arms to his side, sliding down to grab and squeeze. It takes barely a nudge for him to push up, wrapping muscled legs around his waist as Charon holds him fast to the wall, his back arched unnaturally against the protrudent of the call box. 

Vaultie whines. Charon kisses him, mostly to quiet him; the sounds ricochet in the underbelly of the memorial, pinging off the metal halls that haven't had the presence of human life in it for nearly two decades, filled only with the booming timbre of a super mutant's stunted syntax. He pulls back, and surges in. He's warm, and soft, and smooth, just the faintest price of stubble to his jaw when Charon runs his lips across it. He can drag his teeth against the skin there, and suck on the junction. He smells good here, smells perfect, warm and familiar and safe against Charon. Vaultie's body buzzes against his, legs tight around his waist, squirming and bucking against him.

"Charon," His voice pitches. Begging, without speaking, without saying the words. They haven't had much time, to themselves, to experiment. Time for themselves, to figure out their wants and needs. To figure out how to do this with the contract looming ever present. But Vaultie knows, from everyday, that words were important and finite. He can groan names, and though the context behind them is clear, they're not commands. His fingers, dancing out patterns of go, go, go, go-- one of the only ways he can ask, and be truly answered.

Charon uses his own body to press Vaultie to the wall, and one hand that does tremor slightly under the weight; the other goes to the zipper of his vault suit, fumbling one-handedly when it catches on its long descent down. 

There's the tell-tale pneumatic suction of the doors opening. It is his fault. Charon is distracted, and when the doors open, with his arms full, he doesn't have time to react, let alone grab his shotgun. The pistol is cold against his head.

James is not a fighter. If Charon had any mobility, he could disarm him. Risky, but the minute tremble of it against his temple meant a higher chance. He's been under worst odds, and survived with minimal injury. 

"Get off my boy--"

"Dad--!" His voice is too loud, even without a real shell to Charon's ear, twisting his head to stare at his father.

"Adam," There's a note of panic to his voice, "Are you alright? Get off him-" He presses the gun hard to Charon's temple. He eases Vaultie down to his feet, keeping his movements slow and broad. When he shifts, Charon can see the call box that he had been pushing him against out of the corner of his eye. "You-- you sick fuck," The words sound foreign, coming from James, wavering in their anger.

Vaultie is terrified: "No, Dad, no. It's okay--" He has not moved from Charon's shadow, though now he turns to his father; Charon hasn't dared move his head. He does not trust James' fear; Charon has never aimed a gun at something he hadn't meant to kill.

"We heard you," The gun digs forward into his skin as James talks over his son. Vaultie's eyes snap upward, and then back, "Over the intercom. It's alright, Adam."

Color is crawling fast up Vaultie's face. "We're fine. We're okay. Dad--" He reaches up, his hand trembling, anxiety streaked across his face, "Put. P-please. Put the gun down." He grabs the barrel, gently, pushing it aside and down. As soon as it no longer is trained on him, Charon moves backward and away, Vaultie immediately taking his place.

James is rumpled, his face red with anger and exertion, still staring accusingly at Charon. The gun in his hands point at their feet. He notes his finger is hovering over the trigger. "He wasn't..." His face contorts. 

They haven't gone through this with anyone, yet. They've barely had time since Mama Dolce's to process it themselves. Nobody else had known. Time and place designated how welcome ghoul and human relationships were, to varying degrees. It has been years since Charon had left the Capital, but it had never been popular here. 

"He's only 20!" James shouts, "And you, God, you could be pre-war!"

Vaultie's face burns with shame. "Dad, stop."

James turns his gaze to Vaultie now. Charon can only imagine what he is thinking. The irony isn't lost on him. But he knows what it looks like. He's large and ugly and terrifying; he is the stuff nightmares are made of, brooding and densely packed muscle, unspeaking and unflinching. They've exchanged barely a handful of words. Certainly not the obvious choice for Vaultie, with his wide, baleful eyes and quiet disposition. Not for a young man used to the down-right hedonistic comforts of a secure vault.

"He wasn't... Hurting me." The words claw themselves out of Vaultie's hoarse throat; his raw embarrassment is so thick that his eyes are shining with tears. He's alternating between leaning towards Charon while inching away. Embarrassed at being caught. 

James huffs out a tense breath, his eyes still on Charon. "You're a child. You-- and how old are you?"

Charon catches himself glancing towards Vaultie for approval before he fully turns his face. "I was twenty five, twenty six when the bombs dropped." He doesn't remember the exact number; he was never given a date. It had never been important before.

"Believe." His brows furrow, "So you're two-hundred and--" James exhales, "Two hundred and change, and you find it perfectly acceptable to-- my boy--" James voice drops, suddenly taking on a steely edge, "Adam, how long has this been happening?"

"Dad," The words have force, but no real noise above a whisper, "Dad-"

Charon exhales through his nose slowly, focusing on the shaking firearm in Jame's hands. "Dad, Charon, he--" Vaultie fumbles with his own hands; they flail sadly through the air, "We're together. For-- it's been. A few months, I guess. We're not... He's not. You need to put the gun away."

His voice is careening on, rising in pitch as he explains himself into a circle: "H-he has a contract, that I bought. He's not-- he couldn't hurt me if he wanted to." Vaultie babbles. "It doesn't-- it doesn't work like that."

The change is almost instant, the sudden slack to his arms and the slump in his shoulders. James sours, "So, slavery?"

"No," Vaultie yelps. He doesn't sound convinced himself.

"Where's this contract, then?"

Vaultie sucks in a sharp breath. His fingers fumble with the front of his vault suit, pulling at a zipper that had been already pulled down further than he would ever wear it himself. It's tucked in one of the suit's many inner pockets, built into the vault's suit construction algorithm from the time before when people carried paper money and thin IDs.

His hand disappears briefly, into his suit. Charon can hear the crinkle of it, and his voice feels sharp in his throat: "Adam." They both turn to look at him; Vaultie, almost pleading, and James glowering.

It feels too personal, too raw, especially shown to prove a point, in the wake of implied violence.

He's thankful, that he does not need to ask. The quiet understanding passes as a softening of Vaultie's features, and his hand goes slack. He nods. "Of course. Okay." He pulls his hand out from his vault suit, glancing at James. He is looking between them both, mouth drawn tight and pursed. 

James exhales, in the way a parent does, on the cusp of losing the thin balance between admonishment and losing their cool. He crosses his arms, clutching tight at the fabric of his "The ethical connotations of slavery... Adam, I had heard you had done such good in Megaton, around the wasteland. But slavery? I can't condone that. Or..." James, always so verbose, trails off, his eyes moving between them. "What this is."

Vaultie draws his bottom lip between his teeth. "Is it because he's a...?" He looks at Charon plaintively. 

James' finger draw tighter into the crooks of his elbows. "No." He exhales. "Adam. I'm just disappointed."

\--

"Aren't you coming to bed?"

The barracks are outfitted with bunk beds. There are more beds than current scientists, so they can spread out and have their pick of bedding. Vaultie and Charon have a top and lower bunk against the far wall, with Charon on the bottom and Vaultie at the top. Better protection, to have someone have to climb above him to get to him. He could slice someone's Achilles' tendon before they had managed to grab Vaultie from his bed. That was the theory; in practice, in the dead of the night, Vaultie usually would sneak down and curl up small in his arms on the twin-sized mattress. Charon's radiation body heat and the closeness of them pressed together let him sleep more peacefully than he had ever slept in his entire life.

It's only five o'clock. It is not even dark outside yet, though there are no windows this far below in the rotunda. Charon shakes his head, untying the knots on his boots. He undoes his laces halfway, then threads them back through, tighter than before. "Better if I don't." He glances over at Vaultie, sitting small and curled up on the bed, "You know I need very little sleep," He adds, and Vaultie's open mouth closes.

It opens again, "I know. It's just..."

Charon waits a few beats, to see if the rest of the words will come, so he does not interrupt: "I do not want to make things tense."

Before the sun broke over the Potomac, Charon would always, gently nudge him awake. A few times, he would pick him up and place him back into the top bunk. They had been very careful. They would always be careful; by their nature, they were private. They hadn't been careful enough. That's why he just wants to go to bed. He doesn't want to see anyone else's faces, who else may have heard, who had to listen to his Father explain afterwards that no, it wasn't what they thought it was. It was, probably, worst. Garza's sneer and Doctor Li's steely judgement. 

Vaultie feels his chest seize. "But what if-- he takes it. As never. Not anymore." He's ashamed. Not of Charon, but of being caught. But if he wasn't ashamed of Charon, why did his throat feel so thick and the back of his eyes so hot, for what should be a mild embarrassment? 

Charon doesn't bow the end of his shoelaces, but knots them once more, impossibly tight and short. Adam doesn't even know how he removes them in the first place, considering the shortness of the laces and sometimes lack of finger nails, depending on the hand. The motion is rough enough he is momentarily worried they'll snap in his fists. "I did not realize we were continuing."

"Don't you want--?" It comes out fast, at first, and then Vaultie stops himself like a dog at the end of his leash, choking back any other noises. He does not want to finish the sentence; he does not want to know the answer, if it is bad, if he is wrong.  
Even he notices the way Charon's arms seem to hesitate, floating uselessly. He always moves so precisely, so surely. "It is not up to me."

"It is. That's-- that's the point."

Charon seems to be avoiding not only his gaze but looking at him entirely. "I know your Father means a great deal to you." He nods, once, resolute, towards his shoes. "You have only just found him again."

"Yeah," Vaultie's voice pitches, "Y-yeah, I did. And I didn't even go with him, when he asked."

"After he had turned down your request to go back to the Vault." Charon says, carefully. Vaultie feels his throat close. Yes, he had asked. Just us. Without Charon. He almost says, it's not like he'll abandon me, but he can't speak around the constriction and even that is a possible lie. Because he has. He is his Father's son.

Charon stands. "I will be doing a perimeter walk outside. Just because we cleared the camp does not mean more mutants may try to settle down in the empty camp."

Vaultie's teeth chatter. "I don't--- I don't know. I guess. I didn't think it was that bad. This. I don't know." He says it more to himself. Charon glances at him, once, before he leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will post the next chapter soon, bc it's done and I hate cliffhangers aha. Maybe next Thursday? Or earlier? We'll see. Thanks for reading and being patient with updates!


	5. Chapter 5

Every day Charon feels himself pulling away from the confines and stipulations of his original contract. It has been occurring, slowly, over the years, like a long blooming flower; or, maybe, he’s withering away, the last tenants of civilized indoctrination fraying from radiation and age, cords pulling tense then suddenly snapping from the strain.

“Violence invalidates the contract.”

And that now includes all violence. The words are still bitter on his tongue but it is a step; any violence. Any raise of the hand. Ghoul bodies do not show the tattoo of violence like humans, they do not bloom with bruises; leather is impenetrable, and rough, and one scar looks the same as the natural peeling and decay of flesh. When that line is drawn in the sand, Ahzrukhal immobilizes him in the corner of the 9th Circle. He can glare at him from behind the bar but he’s out of immediate reach, so he is not tempted to raise his hand and strike him. Charon stands, impassive and straight-backed. He counts ceiling tiles.

When patrons become unruly, when they do not pay, he acts.

And soon, he only reacts. Cords pulled taught. Snap.

“I want you to kill Greta.”

 _Snap._ Charon tilts his head back. The molded slats of wood of the wall rub against the back of his head, through his thin red hair. In a few years, he will have an indent here in the wall, like the shadow left behind in a nuclear blast. The indent of the back of his skull, the two points of his shoulders, the point of his tailbone. He doesn’t need an explanation, but Ahzrukhal likes to hear himself speak: “I grow tired of this three-way power struggle. Carol will wilt without her by her side, and Winthrop will be easy enough to negotiate with if it brings in the caps and the raw materials.” A pause, to draw in a wheezing breath, lungs rattling with phlegm, “He will be too busy maintaining to meddle.”

Charon crosses his arms and grips his elbows. He does not want to kill Gretta. She is not warm, never has been, but he cannot and does not fault her for that; Carol, however. Carol has a warmth and kindness that others do not afford him. He does not expect soft things like that, but he notices them. She does not do it to get under Ahzrukhal ’s skin (though, inevitably, it does) but out of the simple kindness of her heart. Gretta dead will snuff the life from her. Ghouls are tenacious, and she has survived many things, but she is not sure she will survive this. Not Carol, in her entirety. Gretta is no threat. To cut her down, and watch the round skirt of her pink dress billow out as she falls, would be unnecessary–

_Snap._

Charon exhales. “She is not a threat.”

Ahzrukhal licks his lips. Already, annoyance is evident on his face, the pockmarked skin creasing at the corners of his eyes.

“She is an annoyance that needs to be dealt with.”

“I am not your errand boy.”

Ahzrukhal steps forward.

“Physical violence invalidates the contract.”

And he steps back. He seethes, quiet save for the constant wheeze that escapes him, poisoning the air with his pollution.

“Then what good are you?”

“I am here to defend you, and your life.” Charon states, carefully; he rolls the words around in his mouth, on his tongue, before letting them go. He is speaking slower than even Ahzrukhal, and he knows that must annoy him. Must make his bones splinter with frustration and malice. “I am not your errand boy. I am your body guard.” He wants to see how far he can push it. If Azrukhal is frustrated into violence, he will benefit no matter the outcome. But, to his credit, Azrukhal is not stupid. He seethes, yes, but does not boil-over. He is good at that. Charon has been around him for too long; rubs him raw, doesn’t let him pretend that he’s a man capable of reigning in his emotions. Winthrop and Carol react to him. Charon has been alive for too long, has seen to many things; he can hold his hand to the burner and watch the flesh crackle and peel away.

Ahzrukhal seethes. He does not break things, he does not scream. He is cunning, though. His black eyes narrow.

“Go run laps.”

That is his usual punishment. It works well. Charon is out of arm’s reach and he can make the man run until he’s bleeding through his worn boots and there’s bile down the front of his armor. Charon’s mouth opens, and Ahzrukhal cuts him off before he interrupts– “The Super Mutants are a potential threat to my safety. Run the perimeter. Makes sure it’s safe.”

Charon’s head throbs. He has pushed it too far, he can tell, and now he’s going to have to run until the throbbing dispels itself, until that strange condition of what is safe and what is unsafe is met to fulfill his duty. He might run all day, all night, until Ahzrukhal gets tired of squabbling with a drunk and sends someone to fetch Charon. He wonders, fleetingly, if he were smarter, if he were surer, then maybe he would know the answer to that question, or be able to buck the order entirely. He is neither sly nor cunning; he was not bred and beaten for those traits. He would have been culled long ago if he had.

Charon runs. He initially counts his steps, but soon, allows himself to go numb. The sun is setting at his back.

He does not know what number around he has made, though he does know that his knee is so inflamed and painful he is hobbling more than running. Ahzrukhal’s voice cuts through the dull roar of the city noises; he is obeying before he has a chance to think. He knows he obeys faster and more absolutely when he is tired and worn, when he has less time to entertain thinking. He was meant for the battlefield, not cooped up in a corner where he’s counted what’s left of the ceiling tiles so many times he knows each chipped square like a well-loved painting. It is strange to see Ahzrukhal outside. He looks much smaller with an expanse of sky and tall buildings behind him. Willow has taken the far side of the Museum metro entrance, as far away from them as possible. He cannot make out the expression on her face from so far away, just the trail of smoke from the cigarette hanging from her lips.

“Charon. Come.”

Command. He– obeys. His knee flares with pain. “Gob is at the bar.”

Charon remembers that command. He remembers all standing commands. Gob is for no reason allowed back into the 9th Circle. It’s curious, though, that Ahzrukhal would go out of his way to come out and tell him, leave the bar momentarily unguarded. Ahzrukhal reaches for him and Charon immediately flinches; he settles an almost fatherly hand onto Charon’s shoulder, leans in close.

“I want to see him bleed.” His voice is low, “Do you understand? This is a command– and I know. I know, Charon, that you think yourself incredibly smart, that perhaps that small brain of yours is increasingly deteriorating that you think it wise to not listen to me. But I am smarter than you, Charon. And if you do not listen to me, I will incense Gob to the point of where he will be a danger. And I want to see blood. And then, I want you to clean that blood off the floorboards.” He smiles, “But if you’ve done what I asked to the extent I have asked it, you should not be able to get all of the blood out.”

Charon grunts. Ahzrukhal gives his shoulder a little squeeze, as if he’s sending his son off to the baseball pitch. “Don’t test me, Charon. Obedience will be much easier than rebellion in the long run. And you will be with me for a very, very long time.”  
Charon walks. His knee throbs.

A week later, when he’s healed enough in Doc Barrows med bay, Gob leaves. He hears Carol’s pleas through the thin walls of the museum for him to stay, but he insists he’s fine, that he’s going to go out and make it on his own. Greta glares at him when he passes her on her smoke break, already at a brisk jog, but she’s never not glared at him. He barely has time to notice.

His third lap around, Willow passes him a lit cigarette. His knees hurt and his lungs hurt and his head hurts. He runs.

\--

Vaultie wakes up, in the bottom bunk. The wall is to his back, and two pillows are pressed lengthwise to his body. Over the top of one, he can see the back of Charon's head, the patches of red hair and mottled burgundy skin.   
He realizes his breathing is too quick; he takes another shallow gulp, presses himself back against the wall and hugs the upper pillow to him.

"You are awake?" His voice is soft as he glances over his shoulder.

"Yes."

Charon is quiet. There's only the sound of Vaultie's own breath in his ears. He's not sure what time it is, but all of the scientists don't seem to be in the room in their beds. He's not sure how he slept in so late. His hairline feels sticky from sweat, but he cannot remember the nightmare he had, if he had one.

"Your father wants us to fix a clog in the pipe system." Charon pauses, turning back around to face away from him, "We do not have to rush. I wanted to let you know as soon as you awoke."

"Okay--" Vaultie agrees, automatically, before the realization that Charon spoke to his father last night really settles in-- and when he does, he stops, eyes widening. He blinks. 

Charon stands. He walks to the lockers closest to their beds, idly retrieving Vaultie's clothing; his hung vault suit, a pair of underwear, some socks. When he leans down and into the bottom bunk to hand them over, Vaultie kisses him. He kisses back.


	6. Chapter 6

"To meet Him, you must undergo the Ceremony of Purification, Outsider, and drink the Sap for you to be allowed to see Him."

Vaultie is already doubling over, reaching for what looks like a stagnant puddle of discolored rain water without question; Charon has to hook two thick fingers into a strap on the back of his stealth armor, gently but firmly pulling him back. Vaultie makes a strangled yelp and goes limp, and Charon keeps him aloft of the bowl like a disobedient dog.

Charon glances up from the back of Vaultie's head to Father Birch. "We're not drinking that."

Father Birch's eyes widen. "But you must! For purification--"

"Do I look like the pure type to you?" Charon practically growls. Vaultie's shoulders sag, his body going a little limper in Charon's grasp, knees buckling; all of the muscles in his arm are taught and engaged trying to keep him from toppling over into the carved ceremonial podium in front of him. He glances up at Charon; the ghoul barely glances back at him, lips pressed in a frown.

"No... no. Not exactly." Birch admits, nervously clutching his hands together. "But you must. The Sap will purify your mind and body of anything that may potentially cause Him harm."

Charon does not understand, if this is a God-like deity, why it would need protection at all from the likes of them. When Vaultie touches Charon's side, Birch jumps more than Charon does. "Why don't... we compromise?"

Charon exhales a thin stream of air through his nose. Vaultie has that tone of voice he takes on with the Children of Atom, handling them with gloves, carefully side-stepping their dangerous ways in an effort to coax out the better parts of their beliefs. Before the war, missionaries has been hung, especially the westerners. Now, the apocalypse is lousy with them.

"Let me do the. Uhm, the ritual." He glances up at Birch, to avoid the annoyance creeping across Charon's face. "And Charon can watch over to make sure I'm alright?"

Birch pauses, clearly weighing the options as he shifts his stance. Above them, a breeze blows through the dense trees, and the leaves shiver and shake. He tilts his head towards the trees. "Well. He did want to see you-- see you both, really. And I would not want to deny Him. Are you sure...?"

"That's the only way." Vaultie says, though his voice is quiet and teetering.

"This isn't safe." Charon protests. He tightens his grip; his arm is finally starting to shake under the weight holding Vaultie aloft. With a grunt he pulls Vaultie up to his feet, waiting for the other to rock back firmly onto his heels before removing his hand entirely.

"It's fine." Vaultie says it quiet, smiles big and bright. He's not really glancing at Charon; more past and above him. He reaches out, to brush his fingertips against a fringe of red hair, and Charon closes his eyes. "It's okay. This is a good place."

Birch has a strange look on his face. Vaultie smiles; he does want to meet Him. "I'll drink it."

He steers Vaultie to stand in front of the basin. "I assure you, nothing harmful will happen to you." The other Treeminders gather around. The liquid in the basin looks like any of the other water you could find freestanding in the wasteland; questionably murky and most likely radioactive. It's thicker, however, the viscosity of it shining with the way the light dapples through the trees.

The Treeminders do not make Charon nervous, even if they are armed. They look positively serene, the branches of trees stuck to their clothing, watching Vaultie lean over the basin as Birch begins to speak. There is a young girl watching also, tugging at the hem of what looks to be her mother's tunic. Her eyes are on Charon, but there's no fear there.

"We will now recite the blessing to ward off any harm the Outsider may be carrying before he proceeds to the Grove," Birch intones to the others as he cups his hand through the sap. It's like syrup in his hands, sticking between the webs of his fingers; he raises it to his mouth, and drinks. It's obvious he is trying to disguise his disgust for it, the way his shoulders hunch up; Charon can only imagine what his face looks like.

Birch looks to Charon. "Soon, he will pass peacefully into sleep-"

"Sleep?" Charon feels irritation creeping back up fast.

"Exactly. He will pass peacefully into sleep, and when he awakens, he shall witness His glory firsthand--"

Vaultie, as if on cue, staggers, gripping the basin in a vain effort to keep himself upright; it's Charon's only warning before he collapses like a sack of tatoes, Charon just manages to grab him before his head hits the ground or the base of the basin, his entire body slack. Birch smiles. "Peaceful."

Charon heaves a sigh. It takes him a moment to adjust his grip and haul Vaultie up into a more comfortable carrying position. Birch's hands move excitedly. "Now, just take him over there-- that way is the Grove, but then you must leave at once--"

The trees seem to rustle again. Charon glances up at them; the other Treeminders do, also. Birch seems hesitant. "Or, you can stay, as long as He allows. But not a moment more!"

Charon is already moving. The forest floor is carpeted with soft mosses, fallen leaves and sticks, which have been worn down to paths where the Treeminders have walked; if they want to listen to the trees, that is fine. Nothing in his life has exactly prepared him for this, but he has some hunches. There is probably a man in a tree mask back there, or some sort of near-feral creature he will have to shoot because he decided not to eat what looked like what's smeared behind when a radroach was flattened.

None of the Treeminders hold the gate for him. Charon shoulders it open, careful of Vaultie's prone body as he does so. As soon as the doors close behind him, he takes a few steps and crouches as he places him down on the ground, reaching back to unholster his shotgun.

"Hey! A bona-fide ghoul. Or, you know... Bone-a-fide. Get it?" The voice comes out slow, a little out of breath and a little pained. Clearly an older man, but there's nobody to be seen in the clearing, even as his hacking, self-indulgent laughter shakes the branches. "I haven't been to the Boneyard in years."

Charon stops. He glances over his shoulder, but the gate is locked. Surprisingly, no sound seems to come through from the gate and the thick tangle of bushes and brambles that separates the Grove from the rest of Oasis. "Show yourself."

"What? You can't see me?" The voice is scratching but surprisingly loud. The leaves shake above. "I'm right here!"

Charon frowns. "... Where?"

"Oh, just come on over here. To the middle. Walk towards Herbert."

Charon continues to frown. There's silence. The voice sighs. "Fine. Walk towards _Bob_. The tree."

\--

Harold laughs, bark vocal chords scratching low and rumbling throughout the clearing. "Vault dwellers!"

Charon grunts. Vaultie realizes, and thinks it's very strange, that he can tell it's not an entirely annoyed grunt. Which is odd in itself, not counting that he knows all of Charon's grunts so intimately as to be able to pick out the slight nuances in his wordless noises.

Vaultie's eyes blink open. Long blades of green swim in front of him as his eyes, murky with sleep; he can feel grass under his cheek, cool and damp.

He doesn't remember how he got here. The drink had put him out almost immediately. The leaves. The trees. They're not radiation green, but a kind of deep emerald color that Vaultie's not sure he's ever seen, not in a world where everything has faded and been dusted with brown. And before that, in the Vault, all the colors had faded to something much more muted and dustier, the fluorescent lights and age contributing to their decline. When he turns his gaze a little over, he can see Charon standing in front of a large tree, and he thinks he looks very pretty despite the frown creasing his skin; with the sunlight dappling through the thick foliage, throwing filtered light over Charon's burgundy skin.

"Their upbringing makes 'em special. Or, as Herbert would say, an es-specially big pain in the ass!"

It's the tree that's talking. He almost misses Charon's faint smile, and his own throaty version of a chuckle, underneath the other voice's booming cackle. "But I'm kidding. They do real good, don't they? I'm glad that they only made one of you do that stupid ceremony." Vaultie squints. He can make out a gnarled face in the bark, streaks of a more neon green. The tree is talking.

"... yes. They do."

Vaultie gasps. "Oh no."

Charon turns his face. The smile drops in surprise, his face flashing momentarily with something more vulnerable than usual, lips parting. "You're awake."

"See? What did I say. Sturdy kid, most Vault Dwellers are. Knew he'd survive." Harold barks.

"The tree's talking?" Vaultie manages to squeak out. He's sure he's dead. Or asleep. Or something bad had really been in that sap.

"The tree's name is Harold." Charon confirms, and glances back towards him, "And he needs our help."

\--

They can hear the vertibirds before they see them, their line of sight in the sewer pipes mostly obscured save for a section of grating that has rotted away. Their blades are deafening, this close; there are too many of them. Even Charon is transfixed, watching them touch down around the Memorial like vultures to a dying brahmin. He has not seen such a large mobilized military presence in years.

"Everyone, it seems we have some visitors." James' voice crackles through the intercom speakers. "I don't know who they are or what they want. Please remain in your assigned areas while we get this sorted out."

They wear power armor, like the Brotherhood, but there is something more ominous in the horned helmets, pitch black with large bug eyes. The last man to jump out of the vertibird has four nixie tubes on the back that crackle between each other with unbridled blue energy.

Vaultie nearly loses his footing, turning so sharp in worn down boots in the shallow water of the pipeline. The water soaks up to his shins. He darts back, towards the doorway, and Charon follows on his heel. It's practically a 90 degree drop, with grates alternating as stops so that they do not fall straight through; Vaultie jumps from one to the other, his palms scraping against the rust and the algae that has accumulated over the years. It is easy, to unholster the shotgun that has been hanging heavy on his back this past month. Despite the unceasing paranoia of the past month, it has not prepared Charon for this, not for the highwire tension of all of his programming firing off at once. But comparatively, this is easy, easier than trying to live with the scientists, the listless errand running and stagnation.

Vaultie heaves the grate up, scraping aggressively upward. The putrid smell of the sewer gives way to the mild smell of the laboratory, caustic chemicals dulled by the faint fishy odor of the brackish bay water throughout the facilities. Vaultie propels himself out. Charon does not need to ask, where is your rifle. Charon knows Vaultie left his rifle outside of the pipeline, as it was too large to carry on his back without scraping the mold-covered ceiling. One room over, propped gingerly, and uselessly against the wall. He does not even have time to say anything or tap out a message before Vaultie is dropping down from the tunnel to the ground below.

Charon follows as fast as his creaking bones allow. He does not want to lose sight of him, but Vaultie has pure animal panic written on his face, a molerat looking to burrow before the deathclaw approaches. He rounds the doorway to grab his rifle, instinctively crouching once it's in his hands.

Vaultie turns his head, eyes wide. "Charon--" But the ghoul is already pivoting on his heel, dodging to the side as the butt of a plasma rifle glances off of his shoulder. He is already cocked and loaded; at close range, the entirety of the buckshot hits the tin can. The first staggers the man greatly, the inner mechanization of the suit whirring dangerously loud and high pitched as they struggle to keep him upright. The second shot brings him down, shrapnel glancing the helmet's eye optic. Vaultie is wild-eyed behind him, pupils so small they look like they're drowning in the listless color of his eyes. The blue of the Vault suit washes him out, brings all of the yellows of his pale skin out. Makes him look even sicker.

"I need my suit."

There's no question to it. Charon kicks away the rifle from the slackened grip of the soldier at their feet. The hole in his body is smoking, but there's no guarantee that he's actually dead. For all they know, there are robots underneath the layers of metal, and the soulless bug-eyes of the helmets. They talk, but only in crackling shouts and radio static. He's half tempted to reach into where the edges of the suit are still smoldering, to see if he can feel blood and viscera.

They need to reach the make-shift laboratory barracks. The suit is hanging neatly in Vaultie's locker. He hasn't worn it in weeks.

Charon hesitates before he picks up the discarded laser rifle from the ground. He holsters his shotgun. Eyeballing the faint glow of the cartridge, he reloads. A dull cartridge falls out at their feet. Laser will cut through the power armor better, though he wishes he were better with it, or they were in an open enough space to use grenades. He shoves Vaultie behind him as he walks; surprisingly, he does not protest, the long muzzle of his sniper rifle entering his peripheral and nothing more. He reaches out, briefly, fingers skimming the small of Charon's back; they are trembling.

_Okay._

"Flank me," Charon rasps. Vaultie's fingers leave, along with the muzzle of his gun from his peripheral.

It's not supposed to work like this. Ever since the beginning, Vaultie has invisibly lead the way. Charon provided the much needed cover fire for reloading and taking care of any misfires that were not one shot kills. It's almost distracting that Charon can not see the shudder of a cloak nearby; he keeps reflexively searching for it.

They are lucky that they do not see anyone else on their trip there. The sight of the doorway to the bunks almost makes Charon's heart ache. Vaultie darts into the room. Charon stands at the doorway, looking back the way they came. There's the sound of boots and heavy footsteps above them. He glances over his shoulder; Vaultie already has his boots off, his right arm patiently resting against the bed as the pneumatic lock deactivates on his Pip-Boy. He's nervously drumming on the interface, willing it to go faster.

"We cannot be slowed down. I will bring your pack." He can hear Vaultie's quiet inhale, short and stilted. Charon feels an itch up his spine, so he turns and paces through the room, to check around the corner of the opposite doorway. "We cannot hope to clear the memorial of them. If we are overwhelmed, you need to go quickly."

Vaultie falls silent, save for the rustle of clothing and buckles. When Charon glances back once more, his helmet is on. "I can carry my pack. Take yours. We have to go down to the rotunda."

"That's suicidal."

"No, it's not." He says it with a measure of calmness that's rare for him. "You... you know that."

Maybe Charon does. It's an automatic feeling, to keep Adam away from the fight downstairs. But it's not like the urges he gets when Vaultie places himself in harm's way and his contract kicks in. It's not that kind of instinct. It's something new, but just as deep. "Alright," Charon concedes.

"Let me go first. I'll slip in. Follow behind me and clean up."

They have done this so many times before, there's no need to explain the plan.

This close, even with their fancy armor, Vaultie's bullets are so large that they crack right through the bug eyes of the helmets. The shell hits the ground as he reloads, fast, steady-handed, and lines up the next shot. It goes through the eye, again. Charon shoulders his way through the shadow of the hallway, squeezing off three bursts of energy into the chest of the soldier coming up behind the one that is falling to the ground. There's no kickback from an energy weapon, and he fires off one more round than he intends by squeezing the trigger so hard. It staggers the soldier long enough for Vaultie to reload and aim.

They had only just cleaned the super mutant blood from the gift shop floors, and now the soldier's blood is seeping back over the same cracks.

Charon is the one to push open the door, and Adam slides in first. Charon can see through the partially open door that nobody else is in the immediate area; he can only see Dr. Li on the stairwell, and the rest are grouped together in the raised portion of catwalks that house the control room of the project.

Vaultie stands, his cloak dropping. "Adam!" This may be one of the only times Dr. Li has said his name. There is panic on her face. His father is in the chamber with more soldiers; Charon does not understand why so many people love this man.

Vaultie scrambles up the stairs, nearly losing his footing as he uses his hands on the stair itself to keep balance. The door is locked; Vaultie tries to open it almost immediately. His Dad can see him past the others, but his eyes are focused on the only man not in layers of heavy armor.

"By the authority of the President, this facility is now under United States Government control." He has a strange accent, his tone lilting. "The person in charge is to step forward immediately, and turn over all materials related to this project."

Enclave. He's heard their radio broadcasts. He hadn't thought they still existed. That they had been something long ago programmed and long ago lost, like the woman in her broken English, shouting about Capitalist American Dogs--

Charon stands a little closer behind Vaultie, keeping his fingers on the trigger. His palms are pressed to the door.

"That's quite impossible," James' voice is calm, "This is a private project; the Enclave has no authority here. I'm going to have to ask you to leave at once."

Charon cannot see the front of the officer, only his back; there's no way to discern his rank, if the Enclave still abided by pinnings, and Charon is not sure if he still remembers much of American ones, only which were higher and better targets. "Am I to assume, sir, that you are in charge?"

"Yes, I'm responsible for this project."

"Then I repeat, sir, that you are hereby instructed to immediately hand over all materials related to the purifier." James tries to speak, but the officer does not let him get a word in, "Furthermore, you are to assist Enclave scientists..."

Vaultie turns from the door. There's panic on his face. "We need this open-- lock pick--"

It's not that kind of door. "Colonel? Is it Colonel? I'm sorry, but the facility is not operational..."

"Where's the lock-- the air lock control--" Vaultie peels himself away from the door to jump for the switch, nearly knocking Dr. Lie over as he does so; it clicks uselessly, and even as he switches it back and forth, back and forth, the lights do not change from red. He pulls himself away. "Is there somewhere-- a lock pick?"

"There's no key hole, Adam."

They both look up at the sound of a gun being discharged, and a wail. Janice Kaplinski clutches her stomach; around the edges of her hands, red is soaking into the off-white of her lab coat at an alarming rate. She collapses.

"I suggest you comply immediately, sir, in order to prevent any more incidents. Are we clear?"

James, for once, looks startled. In any other situation, it would be satisfying. Vaultie's hands are shaking. He turns to Charon.

"Shoot the door." His voice is high, "Try to melt the lock-- try to melt the door--"

One of the soldiers looks up at them as Charon does as he is told. It barely singes the metal. "Do it again."

"Adam--"

"Keep shooting it!"

James is stiff when he moves, and his voice is clipped in tone as he turns towards the control panel. Charon can't discern him or the Colonel's words as he rapid-fires round after round of energy into the edge of the door. It is smoking, but barely making a dent. The rifle is starting to become hot in his hands.

There is a bang from the center of the purifier, where the murky water swirls. Everyone in the control panel staggers; almost immediately, Charon can taste the sudden radiation in the air on the back of his palette, sharp and acrid, and he looks up but he doesn't stop shooting. Vaultie screams, lunging at the door. It does not move when he throws himself against it. His Father lurches forward.

Charon drops the rifle, just as the barrel itself begins to smoke. He grabs Vaultie from the door by his waist, his hands still pressed to the glass as James slides, lifelessly, down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly headcanon that in Harold's old age and weird mutations he not only becomes a tree but also gets more and more into terrible puns and dad jokes.
> 
> Thank you so, so much for reviews! They honestly mean so much to me. (I spent some time before finishing up this chapter just rereading some of the nice words people have sent me to cheer me up. :') thanks for reading!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating finally jumps up this chapter! So warning for handjobs and mentions of erectile dysfunction bc Charon's combined two hundred so years and radiation exposure cant be good for dongs

Sarah Lyons is sweet to Vaultie. Charon had met her, briefly, only once before when canvassing the mall. She had been on a special outing with her Pride; they had stopped momentarily to chat, huddled in the trenches standing in an inch of dirt and super mutant blood that would be forming into a thick mud around the heels of their boots. Vaultie has to lean back on his heels, his back pressed to the dirt wall behind him, for his cloak to drop.

"Long time no see." She has an easy smile, pushing a few wisps of light blonde hair that had escaped her hastily done pony tail from her face. He thinks she's very pretty, but Charon knows that he thinks all smoothskins are pretty, because that's what they were supposed to be, compared to ghouls. "Thought you were a goner when you disappeared a bit back."

Vaultie smiles. His hair is growing back now, though it's barely anything, just an inch or so. Charon can tell that it bothers him, how slow it grows; apparently it came out faster in the Vault. It's coming in much darker than his mousy brown hair before, too. It covers the scars better this way. "Just a little side-step. But we're back!"

Sarah looks at Charon. She smiles. He knows the Brotherhood is not keen on ghouls, in general. But they've been leaving Underworld alone ever since Adam has traveled with him. He told Charon how before they had met, he helped defend GNR from a behemoth that had barreled through the junk car fence around the radio station along with Sarah. And even after that, the Brotherhood barely gave him the time of day.

But now, with Three Dog regaling his tales over the radio elaborating each act of his cloaked hand to heroic proportions, the Brotherhood is sweet on him, too. He's still a wastelander, but there's some respect there, even some curiosity. The Brotherhood recruits Wastelanders, on occasion. Maybe when he's older, like how his Dad had gone to be a doctor in the vault, maybe he'll go on to be a scribe, like the ones that sit among the destroyed bookshelves of the old Alexandria Library. Charon doesn't see himself in his future, doesn't even consider he may be around, but he never considers himself in any future tense.

"That's great." She tilts her head, addressing them both. "I'll see you around?"

"Yeah," Vaultie smiles, "See you,"

\--

Charon sits down at the foot of the cot the Brotherhood has designated as Vaultie's bed. The thin mattress dips underneath his weight. He understands comfort in the way a mattress feels beneath sore bones, or the taste of Carol's mirelurk cakes after a long day on an empty stomach. He is not well-versed in other forms of comfort, but he puts a hand to Vaultie's leg and rubs his thumb over the small patch of skin of his ankle between the hem of his vault suit and socks.

Moriarity died a few weeks after they drank with Gob on the roof. He died of a stomach flu of some sort, a common, textbook case of Wasting, wretched and sweating and filthy in a cot at Doc Church's clinic. Just fever and dehydration that got away from him. There was nothing poetic about it; no ultraviolent catharsis for either Gob or Nova, a bullet and a spray of blood. Gob and Nova stood outside the city gates on a fog-heavy morning with Doc Church, and they watched the body go up in flames, less to see him off and more to make sure he was good and truly dead.

Vaultie had only heard about it; he did not see it. And for weeks after, even with the sign overhead repainted, Charon could tell Vaultie walked into the saloon expecting to hear the man, to still see Gob cowering and Nova keeping her distance in the corner. They burnt bodies in the vault, as well, but it felt different out here, as if there was so much space in the wasteland that the lack of a corpse made it feel more temporary. Or maybe Moriarity just felt like something that wouldn't have left so easily, wouldn't have been taken down in fever dreams and his body eating itself up from the inside.

The halls of the Citadel feel similar in their own way to the Jefferson Memorial and even Charon feels that at any moment, James will come down the hall. The other scientists, like before, keep to themselves, but now they are much more quiet. Dr. Li paces. "Death is very rarely just." Charon mumbles, not entirely realizing he was speaking at all. Vaultie stirs underneath his hand, muscles jumping as his fingers scrape over his skin. Charon does not mourn James' death. He was Vaultie's father, but he wasn't a particularly good one. But he regrets another line of hurt and age that has been etched into Vaultie's bones, cutting deep enough to strike marrow. He knows that the death of a loved one is still a strange, foreign concept to him. He understands the things he has never experienced; he supposes that makes him empathetic, but the thought of his own grim face paired with the word could almost crack an inappropriate smile on his face. He's a bodyguard; he kills easily. Empathy does not seem accurate. But Vaultie assures him, that he is good, and that is what good people are.

Vaultie rolls from his side facing the wall to his back. Charon watches him. His eyes are puffy and red, his hair hanging in damp tangles in front of his face.

Charon reaches out. Vaultie's eyes close, brow smoothing as Charon pushes the hair from his face.

Charon kisses him, and kisses him again. When Vaultie makes a soft noise, something bordering on a hiccup of a sob, Charon tries to swallow it, tries to hold him tight and hold him together. Not too tight, or he will break, but enough that he will stay put, enough that he doesn't fall apart.

\--

Willow hands a cigarette to Charon. "I think Patches is going."

He takes it, brow rising silently. 'Going'. They're old ghouls, him and Willow. He doesn't know her past, exactly, and she might not be pre-war, but she's been out front for as long as Charon has been around. They've been this way for a while, at least, irradiated and flayed away.

It's strange to be out of the loop like this. But he's no longer parked in the corner of a bar, collecting information unwanted like trash on the banks of the bay. Charon pulls out his beat up lighter. He lights her cigarette first, then his, breathing in as he does so. "Should I be worried about..?"

Willow shakes her head, hoisting herself up and back to sit on the subway walls. Charon stays standing. "Nah. Winthrop has been keeping an eye on him. Besides, he usually stays in the clinic. Like I said, he's not doing too well." Her smile is thin. "Adam could take him."

"He could. Easily." Charon grunts, "It would break his heart to subdue him."

'Going'. Going feral. It makes sense, with Patches. The alcohol and the jet hasn't been exactly kind to him, and he's been slowly exhibiting the signs for a while. Dementia, declining health. The anger and lashing out is always the tipping point; when confusion turned to garbled sentences hissed between clenched teeth. They don't harm other ghouls, but aggression towards non-ghouls was always telling. Near ferals lasted longer in Underworld, where there were few smoothskin visitors, until they started to get aggressive towards Cerberus. As well as he was programmed, he did have some measure of self-defense in him that he was never hesitant to use towards any ghoul. After that, they were taken to the museum proper.

Patches sending off will be sizable, Charon figures. The town drunk was always celebrated more in death than life. Charon sighs. When he turns towards Willow, she's smiling.

He doesn't need to ask, but she answers, anyway.

"Break his heart?"

A shrug. "Patches has never done wrong by him. He has a soft spot for idiots." As soon as the sentence leaves his mouth he realizes the irony of his statement.

Willow seems to, also, but she's being strangely kind today, though her knowing can't be contained from showing bright in her eyes. "How do you save an employer from a broken heart, anyway?" Willow asks wryly, biting on the edge of her thumbnail in an effort to quell her grin.

Charon exhales with disdain, a distinct, irritated hum that just stretches Willow's smile wider. "Very carefully." Is his dry answer.

"You're such a fucking grump." She laughs, patting the concrete next to her with cigarette in hand.

Charon sighs, but he sits down. He has time. Vaultie only needed to unload their gear over at Tulip's, but he knows that will spiral outward to catching up with Winthrop and the current status of the air filtration units, and if Carol spies him it will be another thirty minutes catching up and stuffing him full of food. He has enough time to smoke a cigarette and chat.

"He looks happy, you know."

Charon is pulled from his thoughts, and he glances over at Willow. "All things considered, that is true."

Willow smiles. She pats Charon's shoulder, and his body dips exaggeratedly with her hand. "Yeah?"

Charon huffs. "Yes."

\--

Carol makes mirelurk cakes twice as big as Vaultie's fist, "The recipe is from back when we had crabs," She tells him with a soft smile, wiping her hands off on the front of her apron. Vaultie likes when she talks about the before time; he tells her what he learned in the Vault, and she tells him about family recipes, and what she could remember. As young as she had been when the bombs fell, she had held on to some things; cooking with her mother, rides through DC's crowded metro, the way the mall had once been carpeted with green grass.

She likes talking about cooking the best. Memories of it were less fraught with death. Back fin filler, claw meat, bread crumbs, red pepper. Touch of mustard powder, old bay, salt and pepper. Vaultie fingers the yellowed recipe card, impeccably transcribed with delicate handwriting. Mirelurk apparently was tougher, with more of the consistency of alligator, but Vaultie didn't know what that tasted like, either. And it was not as sweet as crab, or as decadent as lobster, but it worked well enough when it was pan fried with a touch of oil or broiled in the oven. He wouldn't know either way. Anything that they couldn't grown in the hydroponics labs was made in the synthesizer; the only seafood that came from those were long white and red sticks, also called crab, bland and flaky and always left a weird film clinging to the roof of his mouth.

Carol assures him, even as poor as the food tasted in the Vault, at least it was plentiful, and safe. Which is true. It's strange to think of the food that came from the Vault, or the Vault at all. It's strange to think of spaces safe and unsafe, now. That he would consider the Vault, tucked so far underground, unsafe in any capacity. Blood used to drive him to tears; radroaches sent him into a panic. Now, he knows to stomp on the head to leave the body untouched for scavenging. Peel off the hard carapace and scoop out the viscous flesh to roast, like an over-salted, more gelatinous Scram.

Carol smiles when she brings two paper plates to Vaultie, steam rising from each cake. His train of thought is only broken when she sets them down before him. He smiles and flushes, placing the recipe card that he has been staring at for too long down onto the counter.

"Thanks, Carol." One for him, one for Charon.

"Oh, you're welcome, hon." She pauses, adding, "Don't worry. Time goes on, and you still remember family."

Vaultie wonders if his mother had lived, if she would be like Carol. His father had only one picture of her, the two of them together, young and smiling. Film and cameras were too precious for any other pictures. The cake flakes beautifully under the side of Vaultie's fork, and he takes a bite, chewing slow. He doesn't have the picture anymore. He had left it in the frame the first time he had escaped the Vault, and it had disappeared by the time Amata had called him back. He's not sure if he regrets it, or not.

He pushes a piece of cake from one side of the plate to the other. Carol's form appears in the corner of his vision, leaning over the counter.

"It's not too dry, right? I think I have some mustard."

Vaultie's eyes shift up quickly, then down, "N-no." He smiles, "It's great. Sorry."

"Don't be sorry."

The bell on the front door rings as the door opens; Willow leads, with Charon following behind, ducking slightly as he makes his way through the doorway. Carol smiles as they enter. "What great timing. Willow, let me throw you a cake in the oven, it's still warm."

"I already ate," She protests, approaching the counter, but it's half-hearted; it was hard to turn down Carol's food, both because it was good, and because Carol very rarely let herself be turned down once she had set herself upon something.

Charon pulls up a seat next to Vaultie, where the extra crab cake sits. Vaultie finds himself leaning in towards him, despite the lingering cigarette smoke on his armor. Charon pulls the plate close and grabs his fork. He cuts the entire thing roughly in half with his fork; when Carol turns her back for the fridge, he spears one large piece onto his fork and shovels the entirety of it into his mouth. Vaultie is sure Charon has never taken more than five minutes to eat a meal in his entire life.

"It's getting dark out," Charon says simply, as soon as he swallows. Carol turns around, immediately frowning at the sight of half of the crab cake already gone. He doesn't seem to notice.

"We can stay for the night." Vaultie offers. When Carol turns, Charon spears the other half; however, she turns back around just as fast, placing a butter knife next to Charon's plate before turning back to the stove. He frowns at it, but picks it up. "And leave for Megaton in the morning."

Charon cuts the half into a quarter. It's still an unwieldy piece of food, but smaller than usual. "That would be best."

"Oh, yes," She smiles, "I'll see if Greta can set it up for you."

Greta isn't particularly nice to Vaultie, so he wants to meekly ask if she could just give him the sheets and strip the bed himself, but Carol leaves before he can, her skirt billowing out behind her as she goes to find her wife. Willow has told him not to take it to heart. Carol has forgiven Charon, but Greta hasn't. Not because she cares about Gob, but because it had broke Carol's heart for so long.

Carol is back soon enough, all smiles. The oven timer dings, and Willow's crab cake comes out, and she digs in right away, talking to Carol between bites. Charon somehow moves on from his own plate to Vaultie's half-finished one. He eats almost all of it in three bites, and leaves the last, more sensibly sized bite on the fork that he hangs in front of Adam's face until he wordlessly leans in and takes it off the fork. Other ghouls come in, seat themselves at tables, talk among each other. It's a pleasant buzz of noise that Vaultie lets himself enjoy as he leans his head against Charon's shoulder, letting his eyes close.

He doesn't feel as if he's dozing off, but he must be, as suddenly Vaultie realizes that Carol is talking to him, repeating his name once, twice; he startles. "Yes?"

She's smiling to herself, her scant hair pulled back into a loose pony tail as she brushes a threadbare broom over the ground behind the counter. "The room is ready." The armor on Charon's shoulder has surely made a dent on his cheek by now. To his credit, he hasn't moved, though somehow there are two more empty plates in front of him, scattered with crumbs. Only now, does Vaultie realize there's nobody else really around, except a few stragglers who will soon be wandering off to bed, or some other late-night activity. "It's getting late."

Willow is still on Charon's right. "What a drag. Without them, it's going to be so quiet in here." She teases, starting to stand from her seat. Charon manages the faintest smile, huffing out his amusement. But he's already starting to move, too, jostling Vaultie against him even as he moves slow and deliberate. He already has the key in hand.

The door to the room is open. It's not as nice as the Weatherly, or Gob's Saloon, but the beds are some of the biggest ones Vaultie has come across, even if it means not much can fit between the bathroom partition walls. Greta is bent over the bed, her pink dress billowing out behind her, smoothing down the sheets. When she turns to see them, her face sours.

She hands them their pillows. "Here." Greta frowns at Vaultie. She frowns even more at Charon, her flaking skin creasing exceptionally around her mouth. Charon's used to being frowned at, though; Vaultie's sure it doesn't even register. She leaves just as quickly as she had entered, and Charon locks the stall door behind her.

Vaultie tosses the pillows on the bed and begins to undress for the evening. Even though the room is no more than bathroom toilet partitions cleaned and refashioned together, Carol dims the lights in all parts of the restaurant past a certain time, so it's darker, now. The sheets themselves are nice, though the blankets above them are scratchy and woolen. Vaultie snuggles in, careful not to let his skin touch any of the harsher parts, letting his body sink into the mattress. He hasn't slept on something this nice in a week.

"I'm cold," Vaultie mumbles into the darkness, burying his face into the pillows. Soon, Charon follows. The burst of cold air from the covers lifting is unpleasant, but it's immediately replaced with Charon, and he's all radiation warmth, dry skin. He only grunts a little when Vaultie tucks his body in against him, ice-cold fingers finding all of the warmest, softest places left on him.

Charon jolts when Vaultie's hand brush against his hip bones. He's not wearing any underwear. Vaultie swears the resultant, sharp inhale can be heard through the entirety of the museum.

"We can be quiet," He whispers, the bridge of his nose bumping against Charon's chin. His fingers tap with no rhythm against the jut of Charon's hip bone. It sticks out more on his left than his right, from skin and muscle wearing away; Vaultie knows that now. Every fact about Charon he keeps near to heart, cataloging each and every one in his mind as a precious, small victory.

There's silence, as Charon considers. Vaultie tries to coax the answer out, his fingers stroking errant patterns over his hips, waiting. He snuggles in a little closer, pressing his lips to Charon's neck; he can feel him swallow, throat constricting.

Charon's words almost sound drowsy. "We can be quiet." But it's only because his hands are distracted, tugging at the hem of Vaultie's shirt; he raises his arms, squirming as the shirt is taken up and off, and thrown somewhere off onto the ground. He's already becoming embarrassingly, swiftly hard, just at the thought of what they're going to do. He knows Charon can feel him, pressing through his threadbare underwear, warm against his thighs.

"We can be quiet," Charon repeats, running his hands up flesh the instant it is exposed; unlike Charon, he's soft underneath his clothes, smoothskin through and through. His chest hair is so faint he's not sure it counts, his skin unblemished and unmarked, save for the smooth pucker of scars on his stomach curling around to his side from the remnant's bullets.

Charon's hands don't dwell there, though; they find his nipples almost immediately, rolling each nub under a thumb. Vaultie whines. Charon's smile is bright in the dark. Vaultie huffs as his fingers stop; they resume in the absence of noise. And this time, Vaultie keeps his mouth shut, only lets himself gasp, his back arching off the bed to chase the feeling of Charon's fingers bluntly tugging up at a nipple; it hovers just on that edge of pleasure and pain, and before it can tumble over Charon rolls his thumb soothingly over the nub, sending him shivering back down onto the bed.

Vaultie taps come onto his skin, and Charon immediately sits up, pushing the blankets back, swings his legs up and over to straddle his body. Hunched over him like this, Vaultie can't really see past him. All there is is Charon, mottled skin and shivering chest, encompassing him entirely. He doesn't even feel half as cold as he should, with the warm weight of Charon over him.

Charon switches attention to the other nipple, his other hand stroking at Vaultie's ribs, his belly, the heel of his palm bumping against his underwear each time. So Vaultie shoves it down, leaning up to kiss Charon. His cock springs out, and Charon is close enough that the head bumps against his stomach, probably can feel the pre-cum already leaking out of him. He could find his pleasure here, just rut up, chase the friction of his skin. It's tempting, almost, he's so hard-- He runs his skittering hands down. When Vaultie curls his hand around Charon's cock, his heart leaps; he's halfway hard, already. Charon makes a quiet noise himself, hips stuttering. He's told Vaultie multiple times, not to take it to heart. Radiation was never kind to ghouls. But he can't help the dizzy swell of his thoughts, the smile that he's pressing in kiss after kiss to Charon's lips.

And he likes the way Charon feels in his hands, when he's hard. He only has himself to compare to, and maybe he is just small, or Charon is large, but either way, he feels good, he looks good. It's kind of lewd, but also-- it's not. He's always been the one to shy towards embarrassment, and he still feels that way about himself, and his own body. But Charon? Charon is handsome, and beautiful-- his smile faint, tasting warm and familiar against his lips, quirking just slightly as he reaches down himself, to match the pace of Vaultie's strokes with just a little more softness. He tries not to sound out; it feels good, too good. He feels like he's vibrating underneath Charon, that maybe other people will hear him like the way you could hear a rifle kick back in your bones.

Charon's hands are warm, but especially dry-- Vaultie makes a soft sound, using his free hand to tug at Charon's wrist. It bumbles off of his groin, confused, before Vaultie can drag it up, and against his lips. He doesn't think twice, taking his fingers into his mouth; and they're momentarily limp, before Charon's eyes go dark and he's gently but firmly probing his fingers into his mouth, the shotgun-calloused pads dragging against his tongue, like salt and skin. Vaultie knows he's not doing it slow and careful and sexy, he has no finesse; but Charon's lips part, transfixed.

He only watches a moment more before he pulls his fingers from his mouth, which is good because Vaultie isn't sure he can stand Charon looking at him like that, as good as it is-- it feels so much, too much, and as he replaces his fingers with his own lips, Vaultie still feels like he's being consumed as Charon's now slick hand darts down to take him once more. And then, Vaultie realizes he hasn't been stroking Charon for the past minute, or so, and he squeezes so suddenly he can feel Charon's cock jolt in his hand.

"Careful," He grunts, and Vaultie would reply, except he can't really think. Not in words; maybe in colors, or hand signals, but not in words, the way Charon's multi-faceted hand, with its calluses and rough skin, just slick enough from spit to keep it moving, is working his shaft in firm pumps. He has impeccable rhythm, and when he pauses to roll his open palm over the head Vaultie squeezes his dick again because it's so much, too much. He curls in, his hips stuttering, one hand desperate to claw at Charon's chest-- and Charon presses his lips to his, to swallow his noises, and each breath.

"Oh, oh," Quiet, little gasps are wrung out of him as he trembles between Charon's arms; his pumps have stilled, his hand still on his cock but not moving, and Vaultie is grateful because the only thing worst than movement is the thought of nothing around his twitching, spent cock at all. Only when he looks down, at the mess he's made over his own stomach, does Charon move, squeezing just the last bit of cum from him, wracking his body with shivers. And beyond that, Charon's hips are chasing friction, his touch, thrusting into his loose grip that Vaultie has forgotten he's even had.

That makes him scramble to move-- he matches Charon's thrusts, stroking down as he comes up into his hand, speeding up as he does so. Charon's digging his teeth into his bottom lip, trying to quell noise, even as the bed starts to squeak from his own movements. That's what Vaultie focuses on. Not his thick cock between his fingers, but the way Charon looks like this, so achingly raw and emotive, distorted with pleasure and want and need, gripping hard to Vaultie's waist as he thrusts along with his strokes.

Charon comes silent, save for the hissing escape of air through clenched teeth; gently, he leans over, topples next to Vaultie with a groan of the rusted bed frame. For a moment, he is lax against the mattress, sinking into the sheets. He comes back when Vaultie kisses the line of his jaw once, twice. The perpetual tension of his body comes back, but in half measures. It feels like with each kiss, he's coming back into himself, into his stresses. Vaultie's not sure if he likes it, but it's familiar.

"I love you." He mumbles against his chin.

Charon's sigh is soft, and fond. "I love you, too."

\--

Charon is disassembling his shotgun, his back to the wall. He can hear the scientists walk past, but they all know he is here; they don't bother him. They hadn't bothered him much before the incident, either, but now the tension is so thick they don't even speak to him. The petite blonde woman had once gone out of her way to drag a chair from the opposite end of the Museum then to ask Charon to move over on the bench he was sitting on.

Charon doesn't particularly care. He receives the brunt of it; Vaultie is also walked around, something seen but not acknowledged, but he only orbits around his Father and does not notice.

The steps grow closer; they're approaching the room. Charon looks up as James enters. His eyes fall on him, with purpose.

"Do you have a moment?"

The guts of his gun are spread out on the table before him. Otherwise, he would have removed himself willingly. He does not do it out of pettiness, but he does not care to speak, or the condescending stares, and better to avoid it entirely if he must be here. But he can't reassemble his gun fast enough to stand and walk away as if it were whole, and he is not going to leave with his gun only partially assembled. So he just stares back at James, wordless.

The man doesn't wait for a response; he's used to Vaultie, and they're similar, in some ways. Charon lets his hands continue, diligently cleaning the inner workings of his gun with an oily rag.

James pulls out the seat opposite, and eases himself down. "Charon, is it?"

There's the sound of water running, machines processing, the quiet metallic sound of Charon placing the part down onto the table tucked around the rag. But not a response. He knows his name.

Resolutely, James leans back in his chair. He lets the silence stretch. Charon resumes cleaning the gun. He wonders when Vaultie will return; or, if his Father had sent him on some wild goose chase of an errand to get him out, and unable to interrupt.

Charon's hands are stained with grease, the darkness seeping into the fine lines and dried skin, calloused and worn. The lines cross over his skin, especially stark filled in; some from age, some from scars, some from radiation, mapping wordlessly the time spent on this planet. If James were any other man, he would almost think that he was here to kill him.

James's chair creeks. "You're not going to speak to me?"

Charon's fingers move, thick and assured. And silent.

Charon can hear James breathe in, slow and just a little too loud. Maybe a tinge annoyed. "I think we should talk."

Charon finally looks up. He can see Vaultie in the blue of James eyes, watery blue bordering on a pale grey; and it strikes him, suddenly, that one day he may look like him. His curls might mellow eventually to the thick waves, or become somewhat more unwieldly, coarse with grey hairs. If he lives that long. If Charon lives long enough to see it, also, because God knows his bones ache in ways he never thought possible sometimes.

"Go on."

"Has my son ordered you not to speak with me?"

Charon's hands stop, digging his fingers into the unyielding metal of the barrel of his gun. "I do not take orders." Not like those, not anymore. "I am not speaking to you because I dislike you." And the only reason he is speaking to James is because of Vaultie, not the other way around; but neither James or Vaultie know that.

James seems as satisfied with the answer as he can be, as if just pleased he has finally gotten him to speak. "And why is that?" He asks, methodical.

Charon shakes his head. "What?"

"I am genuinely interested." James' face is impassive.

"Why?" Charon's lip curls back. "Do you want to tell your side? On why you left?"

James sighs. There it is. "It's not as simple as me leaving. I had--"

Charon raises his hand up. James falls silent. "No." Charon turns his attention back to his gun, shaking his head. He picks up, and drops, a screw. "Fuck your reasons."  
He at least has the decency to look surprised, but it's the quiet kind of surprised, brows rising up, still passive and measured. "That is fine. I understand your anger."

Charon drops the screw again. He sets it down, a little harder than necessary. It dents the soft wood of the table top, a small divot that he rubs over with his thumb. "You shouldn't be talking to me." He glares at James. James, with Vaultie's eyes. "You should be talking to your son."

"No. Because this needs to be said to you, if what you say between you two is true," He says, quietly. "I want you to take care of him."

James doesn't know that there was a period of time between Adam's feet hit wasteland dirt for the first time in his life and finding Charon. A substantial period of time, at that. Maybe he should be angry, on Vaultie's behalf. Charon did not know him before the suit; before Anchorage. He's soft-spoken and tender, but he is more than capable of taking care of himself. And why he thinks, if they are more than employer and employee, why his main message would be to protect him--

But James continues, "He can't stay here, once the purifier starts. We need to get to work. Maybe the two of you could go to Rivet City, settle down there, but my son is not a scientist. He never has been."

Charon stares at the wall, behind James head, focusing on the intercom. "Does Adam know this?"

"He's a sensitive boy." Is James' answer. But then he smiles. "I'm sure he will want to leave as soon as it starts, anyway. You two have done some good for the Capital. Just keep him out of trouble." He's already pushing his seat back, supporting himself to his feet with his palms flat on the table. He must be tired of running, at his age-- late forties, or so? Fifty? Better to let someone else do it for him.

Nearly out the door, James pauses to glance over his shoulder. "Oh-- when you see him, can you two please fix a clog in the piping system? Thank you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the reviews. Kudos are appreciated but I collect reviews like a goblin in the tiny cave known as the corporate office that I am kept in the majority of my waking life would collect coins or whatever the fuck goblins collect and read over when up at 12AM wondering what direction their sad life is headed.


	8. Chapter 8

Officer Gomez sucks in a breath, "I probably ought to put you under arrest and take you in to the Overseer, but frankly," He has to crane his neck back to look Charon in the eye, "I know better than to try that."

Vaultie nods, practically vibrating with nerves. What he mumbles is basically incoherent, if vaguely agreeable. Charon is surveying the room without moving his eyes much further than Gomez. This is not like Braun's vault; it is dank, and dirty. This reminds him of the vault with the violin, or the vault with the gas--

He can hear the pop of a low caliber gun, not far off, much too close for comfort. It snaps him to attention. Charon glares down the hall, his fingers twitching towards his shotgun. Gomez looks concerned. "Officer Taylor--" He turns back to glance at them, but only momentarily, before he starts to jog towards the stairway, "Follow me. I can walk you towards the atrium, and then you're on your own. The rebels are in the lower levels. I can't go there."

The stairway leads to an atrium, cluttered with debris. Officer Taylor is an old man. Even with an errant hand, he seems too frail to be of any real danger; his pistol is rattling between his thin fingers. “Didn’t you know better than to stay away?!” Officer Gomez leads them as far as he says he will. Vaultie seems to know the way from there, and as they pass through a doorway, he taps his fingers against the wall for Charon to follow down another set of stairs, deeper still into the vault. 

Charon is noting each vault dweller as they pass. There are not many left, if there were ever many to begin with. They stare, gawking and unapologetic, at Charon's stature, any words that had formed on their lips towards Adam dying at the sight of him. 

The vault dwellers aren't as small as wastelanders, but they're nowhere near as tall as him, for all the lack of radiation and immense nutrition did for them. They are filled out but still short, shorter than people were from before. Maybe it was because of the ceilings, or the lighting that seems too dim to his eyes. He understands now why Vaultie talks about the sun and the moon the way he does, the way he insists on crawling into subways or sewage tunnels for safety at night. It’s dark, and he feels cornered. 

At some points in the Vault, especially those reinforced with trashed furniture, doors clanging uselessly against desks as they try to automatically close, Charon has to duck and twist his bulk to fit through openings. Charon can feel his own shoulders folding, trying to squeeze himself through a space that was surely narrowing as they went further down into the vault. Vaultie glances behind him. He keeps mentioning that this place looks a lot different now, almost as if he's embarrassed, idly running his fingers against broken chairs and stacked lockers as they pass them by, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth.

It looks different, but Vaultie still seems to know the way. Charon's sure he could close his eyes and still get them where they needed to go, because he's never seen him move this fluidly while not walking cloaked and crouched. He’s only wearing his vault suit, as cleaned and as pressed as he could get it, insisting that he would not need it. The clinic they enter reminds Charon of 112's, but instead of being perfectly preserved there is crushed glass underfoot, the drawers upended and emptied out in search of medications. As Vaultie passes by the desk, he idly flicks at the bobble head that still sits on the corner, a familiar motion.

"This was..." He trails off. He glances at the wall. There's a safe there, locked shut. Charon wordlessly heaves his pack onto the desk, careful not to upset the bobble head. He passes a crumpled box of bobby pins and screwdriver to Vaultie, and only then does he keep talking as he wedges the head of it into the lock opening. "My dad's office. I spent a lot of time here."

"Were you hurt often?"

"N-no.... Well." His curls bounce when he shakes his head. "Just... It was quiet, I guess." He pauses. "Safe."

Charon glances around the room. He busies himself with picking things up, turning them over to inspect them for any worth or value. It has been picked through, though sloppily. Amateur scavengers. "Was the vault unsafe?"

"Not like out there." The Bobby pin snaps underneath his fingers, when the shake of his hands pushes the screwdriver into the brittle metal. He exhales. "I guess. In a different way."

Charon hums his understanding, picking up a paperweight, placing it back down on the desk, then moves on to the bobblehead. Charon tucks the bobblehead into his pack; he knows Vaultie will want to keep it. At the sound of another pin snapping, he takes it upon himself to grab another, offering it to him. "Do you want me to try?"

Charon does not have the fingers-- or the patience-- to pick a lock like he can. But Vaultie seems rattled, eyes downcast. "No." Vaultie lets the broken pin fall to the floor, but then he hesitates and immediately bends down to pick it up. He rights the upended trash can next to the desk before placing the debris inside. Without a liner, the pieces just fall out of the wide weaving of the metal. "I got it."

He passes the pin, squeezing his hand as he does so. Vaultie breathes through it as he raises another bobby pin, jamming it back into the hole.

"Damn, it takes some balls to waltz right back into the vault like this." Comes a voice from the door.

The pin breaks again. Charon turns, stepping forward and in front of Vaultie in one smooth motion, squaring his shoulders. Butch DeLoria's expression changes instantly as Charon whirls around, eyes widening and taking a half-step backwards.

"Holy hell." Butch combs his fingers through his hair, slicking it back. The last time he's seen this kind of dedicated hair coifing had been in Snowball's yellowed and dog-eared magazines. "They weren't kidding about you, huh?"

Vaultie turns, keeping himself mostly behind Charon. His fingertips are hovering against his back. "Butch?"

Butch's eyes move, but slowly, nearly rooted to Charon. "Seriously. Are they all like this, out there?"

Vaultie's hand, out of sight, rests on Charon's lower back, fisting tight in the fabric of his shirt that peeks out from the bottom of his leather armor. If he grips it any tighter, it will tear. "N-no. No, most people... there's. There is, uh." He swallows, "There's people like us."

Butch raises an eyebrow. There's a strange power balance going on; Charon can practically feel the fear rolling off of Vaultie in waves, cowed behind him, so strong his mind's practically pulsing for him to crack Butch's neck just to get it over with. But Butch himself is no threat. He stands, relaxed, hands shoved in the pockets of his leather jacket. He's bulkier than Vaultie, and only half a head taller, but there's nothing in his stance that reads killer— maybe fighter, but he's sure at this point, even Vaultie could take a fresh vault dweller in hand-to-hand. He's surprised, but not on alert, and there's nothing in him that Charon can discern immediately that harbors any real ill-will towards Vaultie. Charon does not know emotions, but he does know how to parse threats; Butch is not one in any sense.

He sticks out one of his hands towards Charon. Charon looks at it. "Butch DeLoria. Tunnel snake. We were, like," He nods his chin towards Vaultie, who has only moved a quarter of his body out from behind the protective bulk of Charon, "Practically best buds before his pops got smart and took a hike out of this dump."

Charon can't tell if he's being facetious, if he's purposefully lying, or if he really doesn't know. Vaultie has mentioned Butch before. Him, and his other friends, crowing and cajoling. The Tunnel Snakes. A comparison to raiders had been made. Charon exhales, half-grumbles.

He doesn't take Butch's hand. Butch falters, then pulls it back, rakes his fingers through his hair again. "What, you contagious?"

Charon frowns, "No." Butch tries to stare him down; it lasts even less than with the average wastelander. Vaultie finally steps out from behind Charon, his shoulders bumping into his chest plate. Butch glances between the two, then settles on Vaultie.

"Fine," He shakes his shoulders, adjusting his jacket. "Whatever. Look, have you talked to Amata yet?"

Vaultie shakes his head. "No..."

Butch's face subtly sours. "Yeah, well... you gotta help us. We need to open the vault up. You’ll help, right? I mean, you’re a goody two-shoes." He shrugs, "She still ain't over what happened to her dad, but, you know. I guess that shows how much we need you."

"My dad died," Vaultie blurts, "My dad died, too. Recently."

"Was he killed, too?"

Charon can feel Vaultie flinch, jerking back against him, as if Butch had physically struck him. "Yeah. He was."

Butch looks away for a beat. "Look, I need to get out of-- we all need to get out of here. I mean, me especially. It's a shit hole in here. Any life out there’s gotta be better than anything down here. Think about it man. Down here, I’ll always be stuck down here, with the same food, with the same people, forever. You and your dad had the right idea: get out of this pit, and make your own life.” 

Vaultie just nods. He’s not really focusing on Butch anymore.

Butch exhales. He can tell. “Anyway. We would have been overrun by now, if I didn't take a gun when they declared martial law."

It's just a 10mm on his hip. Butch pats it, as if proud. The two officers on the ground floor level also had the same low-caliber gun. Charon doesn't like to think about it, but before the war, he's taken out larger groups of civilians just as poorly armed and trained as them by himself. With Adam, even without his suit on, any actual danger to themselves is moot.

"Amata is where Freddie's room used to be. You still remember?"

Used to be. "Yeah, I do."

"Alright..." Butch hesitates. "Whatever Amata has you do… see if you can get it open so we can get out of here, too. I'll see you later." And then he nods at Charon. Charon doesn't respond. Butch stares for a beat, than turns.

Vaultie still holds tight to his shirt; he is waiting until Butch’s footsteps fade. Charon turns around. "That was...?"

"Yeah."

"Your stories painted him much more..." Charon runs his tongue over his teeth, chasing the right word. "Dangerous."

"I mean..." Vaultie's face reddens. "He used to... he really used to bully me. A lot. It was--“ He’s turning away now, back to the wall, and the safe, “It was hell."

“Hm.” Charon grunts again. Vaultie stares at the ground. He knows he needs to clarify: “You could easily kill him.”

Maybe not the best clarification. But Adam’s lips twist, slightly, even as his eyebrows furrow in confusion. “I… don’t think I could, really. Well.” He sighs. “That’s a weird thought, isn’t it?”

“But it’s true. He is no real danger.”

He looks confused. But, also, the line of his shoulders are softening. He holds out his hand. Charon pauses; for a moment, he thinks to grab it, to hold it, but then goes to the desk, where he had left the box of Bobby pins. He hands one to Vaultie, and he squeezes his hand as it passes between them. He bypasses the lock, easing the safe open. It’s another 10mm, random ammunition, some pre-war magazines in reading condition, stimpacks and med-x. They were James, before, so they’re Adam’s now. 

—

Once the safe is emptied, they leave the medical bay. It doesn’t take long to find Amata. Vaultie remembers the way. Downstairs is... empty. There aren’t a lot of people here. Upstairs had also been sparse, but the rebels have even less bodies on their side. Vaultie wonders if they realize that, above. Or if Mack realizes that, if they were to storm the medical office, they would have nobody left to shut up inside the vault, nobody else to continue the lineage. 

She looks just the same. He has almost expected her to look older, but it hasn’t been long. But he feels like he looks older, or changed; what, with the scars he’s gained and the way his hair is still growing back on the side of his head where the bullets grazed, the way he’s tanned, even though he’s always entombed in that stealth armor. Still, more sun than below. Amata’s eyes light up when she sees him, throwing her arms around Adam. He doesn't know what to do. He lets his own arms hang limp by his side, paralyzed. "Oh my god, you're back! You actually came back."

"Yeah, I..." She pulls back, her smile soft. She looks so familiar, it makes his heart ache. "Of course I came."

"Thank you.” So earnest. “Everything's gone crazy since you left. And now that you're back, you can help set things straight." She doesn’t sound distraught, or angry at him. It almost feels like she actually missed him.

Vaultie nods, swallowing. "I heard... Mr. Mack?"

"Yeah." Amata frowns. "I was apparently too young to take over for my dad... well. They wanted someone with more experience. And he locked the entire place down after your father left.”

Amata has a gun on her hip, too, but it’s just a 10mm. Though, thinking back to when he escaped, he doesn’t remember any of the guards having a higher caliber weapon than that, either. His eyes wander to Charon, standing arms crossed to the side. Fully armored, shotgun strapped to his back. They must look grotesque, with how overpowered they are. She’s too kind to say anything outwardly, though her eyes linger too long on him. “After the radroaches, even the people who weren’t killed in the scuffle… there were a lot of casualties after. We didn’t have a doctor after the doctor left and his assistant was killed."

There aren’t many left. Jim and Janice Wilkins are gone. And many of the older people are near the cafeteria, on the side of the guards. 

“Can you try to talk some sense into him?” Amata asks. Vaultie blinks. Her face has those gentle lines, the ones people wear when they’ve said something and he hasn’t quite realized it, yet. He nods.

“Yeah. Oh, yeah. I can... I’ll try.” He doesn’t mind. He does things for people in the wasteland, who he’s known for much less time. He’s just— He’s glad to be back. Even if it’s different. 

Amata smiles. 

He wants to help, he really does. But there are some things he wants to accomplish first— he’s already been through his father’s office. Amata tells him that Mrs. Palmer is still alive, in the classroom, but Brotch is in the holding cell in the security office. He’ll have to visit him, as long as it doesn’t make his middle ground existence too fraught with the threat of escalatio, but Mrs. Palmer is doable. The classroom is equally as far between the stairs that divide the rebels from the adults. It is is just as trashed as the rest of the vault, maybe even more so; the emergency lights are out, the only source being the projector playing on the chalk board. Bereft of slides, it clicks from blank frame to blank frame. 

But he can see her, sitting in silence, alone, staring listlessly at the wall. There’s something clutching tight in his chest when she turns towards him, first her face lighting with recognition, and then eyes widening when they fall on Charon's form. "Adam?"

"It's okay, Mrs. Palmer!" His voice warbles in his throat, watching her wrinkled brow crease with fear. "Charon's a friend!"

Her smile smooths over, and though there's some fear still there, she is good at hiding it; she starts to ease herself up to standing. "Well, any friend of yours is a friend of mine. And I'm so glad to see you back,"

"Oh no, n-no, Mrs. Palmer, don't get up!" He lets go of Charon's hand; it falls to his side as Vaultie approaches the old woman. She grasps his hands almost immediately in hers, easing back into the rigid classroom chair. "Are you okay?"

"As well as I can be, hon." Her hands tremble in his grip. Vaultie tries to hold them still, trying not to press too hard, trying to be fragile. "But how are you? Coming back from the outside; it can be so dangerous out there for someone your age."

"I'm doing well." He mumbles, almost trained; I'm doing well instead of I'm doing good, just like he was taught.

She looks Vaultie over, and at the rifle strapped to his back; and then, at Charon, still wearing all of his wasteland-dirty armor, face perpetually frowning. "It looks like you're safe, at least. Probably safer than here..."

"Jonas--"

"I know, dear."

"It wasn't me!"

"I know," In his grasp, she lifts her hands away, to pat his face. Vaultie's body shudders as he inhales. "I hadn't expected to see both of my grandchildren go before me, but life's... strange that way." Her thin smile barely quirks at the edges, "I could accept that some creature got Anne, but Jonas..."

"It was one of them," Vaultie interrupts, almost breathless. "It-- one of the security. I-it wasn't me, or my dad."

Palmer's eyes crinkle in the corners, "Shh, dear. I know. He was always a good boy, too smart for his own good. A little like you, that way." She touches the side of his face, fingers to his cheek. “Be careful, for me?”

“I’ll be...” He feels a hiccup threatening to bubble up in his throat. “I’ll be careful.”

She takes his hand in hers, squeezing it once, twice, her other hand still patting his face. 

He doesn’t want to tell her that he’s going to see Mack, but he thinks she knows, somehow. Why else would he be here? Vaultie remembers the way Allen Mack beat his palms against the reinforced glass of his living room, screaming at him in the atrium.

Almodovar wasn't Adam's first human casualty. That had been Officer Kendall; an accident, really. He had never wanted to hurt any of them. He would have stayed in the Vault forever, if he could have, without having ever known the feel of hot blood splattering over his face and the kickback of a real gun bruising his shoulder. And looking back, he doesn't know how he did it. He doesn't know where he pulled that strength, the sheer will of survival, to fight back and keep living. To keep going. Charon and Vaultie leave the classroom, taking the stairwells up. Their footsteps echo in the empty hall; Officer Taylor is no longer in position behind the tables stacked like barricades in the atrium.

"Fuck you, Overseer." Charon reads, deadpan. Vaultie follows his sight up to the vandalized sign. The spray paint has long since dried, having dripped down and just touched the edge of the bubble window there. Nobody is standing, watching, like Almodovar had before. But maybe Mack had already seen them and retreated into his office. It was a good position for a sniper; he’s never noticed that before. 

Vaultie swallows. "That used to say 'Thank you'." 

"Hm."

Vaultie could see Allen Mack doing well in the wastes. He wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger. Or maybe, he's just telling himself that. To make himself feel better. He can feel Charon's eyes switch from the sign to him, awaiting signal.

He isn't meeting Charon's gaze, but he starts to walk again. The words just tumble out: "I don't think we'll be able to reason with the Overseer."

"Is that so?" Charon is already reaching to unholster his gun from his back; Vaultie does not correct him.

"I... yeah. Mr. Mack was never..." He trails off. "You know."

"You would try to see the best in a super mutant..." Charon exhales, "Yes, then, I do know."

Vaultie nods, his eyes flitting over to Charon. "He used to. You know, he was, he was always really stern, but, his kids-- h-he was mean to Susie, and Wally. And..." His shoulders are creeping up to his ears as he starts to walk up the stairwell, like he's trying to collapse in on himself, make himself even smaller still. He remembers overhearing Mack beg his father for just a few more pills for pain management, months after he should have been giving them to him in the first place. "Amata... sh-she got Stevie, when I was escaping. He was trying to make her talk, and tell him where I--" Vaultie runs out a breath, and runs out of words, so he sucks in air and lets it out quiet, "And sh-she shot him.” Their footsteps echo off the floor, and bounce against the stairwell walls that seem to be closing in as they rise. Had it always been this empty, this silent? Or had he not known any better?

When Vaultie turns to look at Charon, he's looking back at him. It feels strange, knowing he's visible here, out in the open, just standing in his vault suit. It doesn't even feel safe here anymore. Not like it used to.

Charon’s gaze purposefully moves up, back to the vandalized sign. Vaultie follows it. There’s a figure in the porthole window there, shadowed. Dread shoots instant up his spine. Charon’s voice floats by, monotone: "Do you think she told him who killed his son?"

"I--" It comes out right away, barely before Charon finishes his sentence, half-gasped. It's such a simple thought. It's so, so simple, but he feels stupid, because that hadn't even occurred to him that Allen Mack wouldn’t know, that everyone even might have a different story than what actually had transpired that day. "I don't know." Would she be alive, even, if he did know? No, no. Of course not. 

A part of him wants to turn away. But he’s already here, so he keeps going, keeps walking. Charon follows. They take the steps, and even in his vault suit, he finds himself crouching down, taking to the long shadows thrown by the terminal towers.

Someone is pacing— no, patrolling. Vaultie gestures, fingers curling: quiet, don’t engage. As large as Charon is, he can walk just as silently as Vaultie’s compact frame, and he follows behind, shotgun cradled close to his body. 

The computer system towers, nearly reaching the ceiling, hum. Just loud enough to mask the sound of footsteps. Their foot falls are quiet, practically silent.

Vaultie holds out an arm, Charon’s weight warm against it, peering around one tower. Officer Wilkins is walking past, eyes narrowed. He pauses momentarily, then keeps walking. 

He does not have to direct in these moments. It’s instinct, waiting until Wilkins turns away; they slip behind him and further through the hallway, slowing once they’ve turned the corner and out of the immediate line of sight if Wilkins were to turn around. Mack is not far off; as soon as they’re out of earshot, Vaultie straightens up, quickening his pace. Above the door, the words ‘Overseer’s Office’ are perfectly backlit on the sign. The door is unlocked, hydraulics hissing as the doors open.

They were expected. Mack is waiting, standing at the overseer’s desk, chair gently swinging behind him as if he had just stood to attention. It looks similar to how it was when Vaultie had left, though of course the tunnel has been closed, and any personal effects of Almodovar have been removed. “Well, look who came crawling back home?” His smile is cruel. It reaches his eyes, shaded by that ever present baseball cap he still wears.

Immediately, Vaultie feels himself folding in onto himself, trying to make himself smaller, trying to appease himself to another hissing and snapping adult. He feels like a child again. The doors close automatically behind them, and he jumps. “I—“

Mack doesn’t let him get a word in, “What's the matter? Homesick? Outside not everything it was cracked up to be?” He advances on each question, a sinister caricature, “Or was it just that Daddy didn't want you anymore?”

Behind him, Charon inhales sharp through clenched teeth.

“Don’t—“ His voice cracks.

“Don’t what? Speak about your father like that? What’s the matter, runt? Did I hit a sore spot?”

Vaultie clutches at the hem of his shirt sleeve, digs his fingernails into his palm. “I just... I just want to talk to you. About the vault, about letting—“

“Oh!” Mack barks out a laugh, “Really? Because you weren’t here to talk with the last Overseer.”

He recoils. “That wasn’t. That was different.”

Mack exhales shortly. “That’s why I’m in charge, now.” He places both hands on the desk, leaning forward, “So you’ll excuse me if I don’t trust you, and if I don’t think you’ve got my vault’s best interests at heart.”

Was Alphonse better? It doesn’t really matter. He’s not the good guy in this. But— he was just trying to escape. He was just trying not to get killed. “What can I do—“ It’s all slipping fast through his grasp. “What can I do to make you think— I don’t. I just want to help— the vault can’t, it c-can’t continue like this.”

Mack scoffs with disgust. “What do you know? You were the product of the last time we tried to open up the Vault. Most of the people in here will just get themselves killed out there.” He pointedly glares at Charon. “You know that better than anyone. But down here, they’ve got a safe life.”

It’s true. It was safe down here. He doesn’t really know if the vault should be opened; even if they stay in here, and only trade with the outside, what defenses do they if the raiders of Springfield come to their door? They have no idea what it’s like outside—

“And while we’re down here, I’m in charge. Like the G.O.A.T. said: to whom do we owe everything you have, including our lives?’”

When he stumbled out into the wastes, he almost missed Megaton. Could have wandered down the broken road, past the elementary school. He would have been killed, or worse. He finds himself mouthing the words with Mack under his breath, automatic, a benediction: “The Overseer.”

Mack smiles. “They’re just caught up in the idea of change, is all. They’d walk outside and die in seconds flat.” He looks down and drums his fingers against the desk, once, twice. Lets the silence stretch, but is too impatient to let it go for long: “Now, I’ll make this easy for you. You can walk away and let me handle the Vault.” Mack leans in, and Vaultie feels something prickle in the back of his eyes, making eye contact like this. “Or, I can put you down like a rabid dog. Your choice, kid.”

Charon is silent behind him. He can feel a dampness under his arms. This has gone too south, too fast. “I- but I. I want to talk this through.” Mack’s face darkens as he croaks, “The— the rebels want to talk it through.”

Mack’s nostrils flare. “Get out.”

“Mr. Mack—“

Allen Mack pulls out his gun. It's a small thing, but that makes it easier for him to unholster from his hip, much faster than Charon can raise his gun. For a second, Vaultie’s sure one of them is going to get shot; and from this close, even with armor, it would leave more than a blooming bruise.

It's wildly off. Vaultie's silenced 10mm is out a second after, firing three bullets in rapid succession into Allen's chest, the mosquito hum of them sharp in his ears. They stagger Mack and he shoots again, reflexively squeezing the trigger as he falls, but it’s such a wide shot that it clears both Vaultie and Charon with a wide berth, burying itself into the ceiling. The backs of his knees hit the chair and it wheels out beneath the weight of his slumping body; blood is soaking through the thermal layers, through the radiation protection, staining the blue until it’s a muddy brown. 

With how small of a room, and how enclosed it is, his ears are still ringing from the gunshots. There are footsteps. A guard is barreling through— Charon snarls as he turns towards the door, the pump of his shotgun cocking loud. The footsteps stop. 

They’ve cornered themselves. Unless— did Mack change the password for the Overseer’s terminal? Vaultie wheels. He could escape again through the tunnel, again, again— he trips over Mack’s body, catching himself with a jolt against the desk with his pistol still in hand, butt of it jamming hard into palm. This needs to work; surrounded by guards, with a dead Overseer cooling at their feet, and his stealth suit is waiting however many feet above in Megaton, there’s no other way out, unless they go the way they came. He’s not afraid of dying. They’re all so poorly trained. But the thought of having to kill them all to escape—

“Adam?”

It’s Amata. Vaultie looks up from the terminal, hands hovering over the keyboard. Amata steps into the doorway, and immediately flinches back. 

“Amata?” She’s looking at his gun, and Charon’s gun. And then Allen Mack, and there are tears brimming in her eyes as her hand flies up to cover her mouth, stumbling back to grab onto the doorway frame for support. “Amata, Amata— I am so, so sorry—”

\--

"Adam?"

Vaultie blinks. His doubled vision comes together, suddenly startled back from-- what? He wasn't day dreaming, but he can't remember what he was doing. Not paying attention, at least. Sarah Lyons is watching him, her father to her left. Charon is, too. The projector clicks heavily to the next slide, a grainy map shining on the screen. The Potomac river is cast on Rothchild’s red robes, vault locations starring across his belt, up to his collar.

"Yes?"

The Citadel reminds Vaultie, kind of, of home. Of the Vault, of low ceilings and everyone is in uniform and trying to look as busy as possible, even when they weren't. The lighting is the same, too.

Though, home, he tries to correct himself both mentally and when speaking that the Vault is not his home anymore. His home is— Megaton, maybe, in the sound of Wadsworth’s fans as he putters around downstairs and the way the foundation creeks in strong night winds. But he doesn’t spend much time there anymore, so maybe that’s not home either.

"Is everything alright?" Rothchild looks much more stern than he actually is, with his severe frown lines and hawkish nose. His tone is kind, not accusatory.

Under the table, Charon knocks his thigh against his. Vaultie nods, blinking rapidly. "Yeah, it's... y-yeah."

Sarah smiles. Elder Lyons clears his throat. "Scribe Rothchild? Do continue."

"Yes," Rothchild gestures to the screen, "As I was saying, we've narrowed down the location of the GECK, Vault 87. Now, the radiation levels there are much to high for someone-- well. For a human to survive..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading this over shae!!!
> 
> sorry that this took so long.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought a long weekend deserved a long chapter? It’s 12k. Eep!

The computer uploaded with the Vault-Tec information is nestled in a corner of the A wing, next to other archival terminals. Vaultie has made sure to pour over all of the others before he gets to this one, though reading about past Brotherhood leaders of the Maxson dynasty quickly become boring for him, someone who has devoured thesauruses just because it was the only thing he had left to read. The other scribes gave him and Charon a wide berth, having heard from both Rothchild and Elder Lyons that he was free to do as much reading as he needed or wanted. And everyone is busy themselves, now that the Enclave’s here.

Vaultie was fine with that. The past month— his head still swims with the thought of it. How fast time as gone. The water purifier, the escape, going back to the Vault— everything feels like it’s rushing forward at break neck speed, hurtling by so quick he can barely keep up.

Still, he feels guilty. Taking the time to read, even if it was necessary for the task ahead, felt too indulgent. Especially the way war was hanging in the air, making the humidity of summer feel like a morbid pall that hangs over the ruins of DC, so heavy and cloying that it felt too thick to breathe come mid-noon.

He twists the knob until Vault 101 is highlighted. He could click enter. He hovers. But, he twists it one over, to Vault 87, hitting enter. The screen is full, but there’s not a lot of information to be had in the dossier. The majority of it had been redacted by Vault-Tec long ago, and a portion has been corrupted over the years, characters melding into neon green gibberish across the screen. But there, under the non-standard equipment heading, it lists the G.E.C.K. That’s all the confirmation they need.

“Adam?” Charon leans in, magazine in hand, chair creaking. He holds the issue of Guns and Bullets out in front of the screen, jabbing a finger so hard at a paragraph that Vaultie is afraid the tissue thin pages will tear. He has to bat at Charon’s hand so that his thick fingers will move over enough for him to see.

“Oh,” Vaultie scrunches his face up, squinting, “‘Supersede’. Is that it?” Charon hums in agreement, and Vaultie reads the line as Charon drags his finger across the entire sentence. ‘The new R95 rifle will supersede the R91 once production ramps up.’”

Charon hums. “Supersede.”

“Overtake.” He has to confirm, though only after does Vaultie realize it might be patronizing, feeling guilty.

Charon doesn’t seem to notice. He hums again, in acknowledgement, falling silent once more. He likes Guns and Bullets, and Duck and Cover!, and occasionally will pick through an issue of Tumblers Today, but that never holds his attention long. He doesn’t read nonfiction, or anything that wasn’t prewar; though, Vaultie is sure the latter is less because of taste and more because anything handwritten is too hard for him to read, having found a few copies thrown in a heap against the far wall of the spare room before noticing Charon never picked them up anymore when Vaultie left them finished on the coffee table downstairs. But The Citadel has plenty of copies of the sort of dry reading materials Charon likes, filled with military and munitions terms that Charon already can read from years of experience.

He’s been getting better, asking Vaultie less and less to ask for clarification; and it could make his heart burst, it really could, but he doesn’t want to embarrass him by telling him so, or— sound condescending, like patting the head of a dumb dog. Charon’s not a dumb dog, but he does have what amounts to a bill of sale tucked against his breast. Vaultie turns back to the screen, the sudden nervous agitation of guilt pushing him into backing out of the screen, and entering into the Vault 101 file.  
FILES CORRUPTED.

FILES CORRUPTED.

ERROR. PLEASE REINSTALL OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARE.

When Vaultie glances over at Charon, he catches his eyes going back and forth, from his face, to the screen. He feels his face burning, rapidly pressing backspace on the keyboard until he hits the main screen. Charon turns his attention back to the dog-eared copy of Guns and Bullets, but he reaches out with one hand and lets it rest on Vaultie’s knee. Vaultie puts his hand over his and squeezes it, hard.

—

They head out in the early morning, timing it for when the caravans pass by. The traveling merchants leave Rivet City at least an hour before day break, the dark helping mask their movements from super mutants and wandering raiders. They don’t stop at the Citadel, but they always pass by, knowing that most threats don’t wander within shooting distance of the knights stationed in the vicinity. Charon is simultaneously annoyed and relieved when he sees its Wolfgang. Harith won’t walk with them unless they buy something, Doc Hoff has mean eyes, and Crow has been avoiding them entirely ever since he heard from Vaultie that they had actually visited Oasis. Wolfgang can be annoying, but he was manageable. He almost seems glad to see them, Charon leaning against the metal walls of the Citadel, Vaultie pushing himself up from the ground with his helmet tucked under his hands.

“Long time no see! Need anything?” Wolfgang talks a mile a minute, waving them over, “Walk with me, walk with me,” Wolfgang looks subtly pleased as they both approach and keep in step. They have more mercenaries than they had last time he had saw him, possibly fresh recruits from Rivet City. Two that Charon can’t recall seeing before stare as Vaultie puts on his helmet.

“Uh, yeah.” He mutters, voice changing as its filtered through the voice nodule of the stealth suit, “We’re heading to Megaton.”

“Ah!” Wolfgang seems to light up at that, “Why, how could I say no to you two? Defenders of the waste!” They haven’t slowed; if anything, the group quickens its pace as it rounds the bend, past the last group of power armored soldiers, the blank expressions of the bug-eyed helmets swiveling to track them. Generally, they were safe, annoying catcalls about wastelanders aside. But the average Brotherhood soldier could be dangerous when not under the eyes of a superior and close to a brahmin stuffed with caps. Wolfgang glances back at Charon, who is always two steps behind Vaultie, “Would you mind, bud, unslinging that shotgun for me?”

Charon feels his lip curling back into a snarl at the suggestion, the cadence of bud ringing in his ears. Wolfgang looks to Vaultie; it takes him more than a few beats, especially encased in that helmet of his, to even realize he’s being looked at. His shoulders do a little jump upwards. “Why are you...?”

Wolfgang is slick, though, “Oh, I just figured. If you’re walking with us— he’s the most threatening.“

The question hangs in the air, unanswered: ‘Why are you turning to me?’ Charon is almost expecting Vaultie to just tell him, to just confirm Wolfgang’s order, but instead he reaches for his own pistol on his hip. “Does that help?” With the silencer and extended clip on, it looks too slim, if a gun could even look gangly, almost comical, especially held in armor as imposing as Vaultie’s hei gui can be with his oversized sniper rifle still strapped to his back.

Wolfgang’s smile twitches. “Yeah, that’s great, that’s great.” He doesn’t speak to Charon for the rest of the trek. But that’s preferable to him. He would rather just zone out, and listen when he wants to. Wolfgang, at the very least, is good at talking. Half of what he says is gossip, but the rest is actual information. Charon is not surprised to hear that he was right in his guess that two of the mercenaries are new. The Brotherhood had instantly swung their focus from the super mutants to the Enclave; they had never been incredibly friendly, before, but seeing them entirely militarized makes Rivet City to Megaton jittery, not even mentioning the Enclave themselves. They shoot on sight, with much more accuracy and firepower than a raider could ever dream to manage. Roe is terrified of losing his (though Charon interrupts, ignored, to point out that they are Vaultie’s as well) investments.

“Harith is making a killing, at least,” Wolfgang says, cigarette drooping from his lip. He leans in, close to Vaultie, nudging him with his elbow as if he’s telling a secret, even though his voice is still as loud as it was before: “I’ll let you have first dibs on my inventory once we hit Megaton. Even before I drop off what Simms ordered.”

It's hard to get .308 rounds. They weren't common before the bombs, either. 10mm could be found next to father's pistol on the nightstand in every suburban home. But high caliber rounds like that? Vaultie scrounges. Even with the amount of money they have, it's hard to buy, and if Charon isn't the one to do it then they pay an added premium when Vaultie inadvertently lets slip how important the munitions are to them. The thought of getting first offer on inventory is exciting.

It’s been dark for about an hour when they reach the gates of Megaton, Primm Slim’s face plate bright underneath the dark shadows of the Megaton gate. They trade with Wolfgang, who surprisingly holds to his deal and lets them clean him out of what few .308s he carries. Vaultie also buys a fusion battery and a teddy bear. “For Dogmeat,” He adds unheeded, counting his caps out on his palm twice before handing them over. Though, the dog is barely his anymore, considering how little they’re here, and how attached he’s become to Harden.

Stockholm is off shift, but another member of the walkway guard waves them in and hoists up the gate. Usually, the gate closes at nightfall and it doesn’t open until the next morning, but Lucas graciously offered an exception to them. Vaultie takes his hand in the shadows of the airplane wreckage and the dust kicking up around them, but lets go as soon as they are inside.

Charon is thankful that it’s late enough they’re not bothered. If it’s not Simms, it’s Harden, or a random person wanting to give their thanks and some small trinket that Vaultie always wants to give back, until Charon had to convince him it was probably more rude to refuse the gift than to take it. They immediately turn left to walk up the hill, away from the dull chatter of the center of the town, and the decommissioned bomb. They can still hear the faint chatter of people sitting up at the Brass Lantern bar when Vaultie unlocks his door and lets them in.

“Good evening, sirs!” Wadsworth chirps from upstairs. Vaultie has to fumble for the light switch, and Charon takes his pack, along with his own, to the far corner. They’ll empty everything out tomorrow, decide what to sell and what to keep, and then organize it amongst the lockers downstairs. Charon can hear Wadsworth’s fans whirring, pausing at the top of the stairs. “Would you like for me to cook a meal? I wish I would have known. I would have picked up groceries.“

“It’s fine, Wadsworth! Good evening!” Vaultie calls back as he toes off his boots, putting them next to Wadsworth’s consoles and docking station. Charon follows suit, slumping into the nearest armchair instead of trying to stand and wrestle everything off. There’s still something that seems so off-putting at feeling so at ease with stripping his armor off. That remaining, niggling sense of disbelief. Only when he’s pulling off his muck-crusted armor in the home where he sleeps with Adam, eats with abandon, the most basic yet-decadent feeling creature comforts. A home with a robot butler. Carpet between his toes. He watches Vaultie disappear into the kitchen, hears the click of the oven’s flame igniting and pots and pans clanking on the shelves. “I’ll just make razorgrain and spam. Can you start a bath?”

They’ve been gone so long from Megaton that they have enough water rations saved up for a bath with clean, purified water, and still have enough rations leftover to keep Vaultie drinking the good stuff three times a day for a month and change straight. They’re lucky they have a private bathroom at all, compared to the majority of the Megaton inhabitants and guests, who use the public stalls and tubs. It’s on the second floor, to the right of the stairs, a little add-on that Vaultie had poured his excess caps into after Moira had initially furnished the house with the finest pre-war furniture she and the caravans that passed by could find. It's simple, but even simple was luxurious; a tub, with a basic spigot above that poured water into it, and a toilet on the opposite side. They can empty the tub out by a valve on the pipe that takes the dirty water down, to the underbelly of the Megaton walkways. The water pumped up from the numerous pipes around town, and it was heated by fusion cells attached to the porcelain, another Moira Brown contraption that Charon isn’t sure is exactly safe.

But, it works. Charon can hear as soon as Wadsworth turns on the pipes, and then he’s gliding down the stairs, anxious to relieve Vaultie of his duties in the kitchen. Vaultie worries that keeping Wadsworth at home is just as cruel as it would be keeping Dogmeat alone at home, but he’s just a robot programmed to please, and he does get sick of them making a mess when they stay for long stretches.

“How long will you be staying, sirs?” Wadsworth used to only speak to Vaultie. Now he addresses them both, ever since the pull out couch in the small side room has been left unfolded.

“Not long. A day, or three. We have to head to the Vault—“ He pauses, “Well. And then, after that. Back to the Citadel. Maybe a week, or two? We’ll be back then.”

It takes some time for the water to pump from the station to their home through Megaton’s labyrinthine waterworks. There’s enough time for the razor grain to boil, and for Wadsworth to dice and mix in the spam. It comes out in a porridge texture when finished, thick and a little gloppy, and they eat it both like they haven’t eaten in days.

“Water’s ready, sir!”

“Thanks, Wadsworth!”

Vaultie rushes to finish, jumping up to rinse his bowl and fork off, and he calls to Charon from the kitchen, “Eat the rest, please. Feel free.” Being raised in the vault meant Vaultie held baths in a higher esteem than any wastelander Charon has ever met. He bounds straight up the stairs after. When Charon brings his own empty bowl to the sink, he does help himself to the rest, eating from the wooden spoon Wadsworth used in mixing to scrape the sides of the pot, the grease from the spam and the slightly burnt, stuck bits of starch near the bottom. Neither of them could cook, and they didn’t mind, as long as it stuck to their ribs. He wanders back into the living room, making sure everything was in order downstairs and all of the locks back on the doors and screens before venturing upstairs.

At the top of the stairs, the bathroom door is open. Charon leans against the frame, watching the slope of Vaultie’s bare back bent over the tub. He’s holding his towel carelessly low, trying to find the plug in the water. It gurgles when his hands finally find purchase on the chain and yanks it out.  
  
“Oh!” When he turns around, he jumps; he’s already scrubbed pinkish from aggressively trying to clean weeks of sweat and muck from his body, but even more color rushes to his face as he clutches his threadbare towel higher to his waist. The Citadel had showers, but they were nearly always occupied, and the water came out ice cold. “Sorry. Yours should be ready soon…” He trails off, his eyes downward as his fingers knot into the tatty fabric of the towel.

A small smile crosses Charon's face. When Vaultie approaches, he has to stand on his tiptoes to kiss him. So shy that he gets close, pulls away, then pushes in again, suddenly, their teeth almost clacking together. When they part, Vaultie exhales as if he had been holding his breath for a very long time. "I'm. Uh. Going to get ready for bed."

The water is still dripping steady from the pipe hanging over the tub; Charon leans down to shut off the fusion cells on the tub. The cold water feels better to him in the summer, anyway, though he always has to wait until Vaultie leaves to do so, or he’ll fret and fuss that he’s doing it because he doesn’t want to waste the cells on himself; which is entirely valid and true, even though Charon doesn’t tell him so.

Charon finishes undressing out of his clothing in the bathroom. He’s filled out since traveling with Vaultie; his muscles used to look like they were carved hard and pronounced, his body fat had been so low, with how much Ahzrukhal detested wasting food on him. But now his edges have softened out, and he doesn’t ache as much as he used to; he might even be stronger, now that he eats more than once every other day, and actual meals instead of the leftovers that Ahzrukhal had already picked over, gristle and dented pre-war cans of slop and the hard ends of stale bread. Underneath some of his more translucent pieces of skin, he’s spotted streaks of fat, healthier looking muscle— healthy for a ghoul, for what he’s known in the past two centuries.

The water isn’t even that cold when he steps in, warmed from moving through the city’s pipes that sit in the sun all day. Charon bathes, quick and methodical.

—

Vaultie’s in bed, his back to the door, when Charon steps inside. When he crawls into bed, next to him, Vaultie rolls around, eyes wide and awake.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“No.” He shifts, their knees bumping together as he scoots closer to the wall, so Charon can have more room. It’s not a large bed, by any means, but they fit just fine. “I’m just— thinking. The G.E.C.K. How hard it’s going to be through the caverns. Maybe we should try the front.”

“They say it sustained a direct blow to the door. It’s ruined.”

“So? There’s Rad-X. I have a suit—“

Charon frowns, “If that is the case, let me retrieve it for you by myself. Radiation does not bother me.”

“Then what’s to say it’s not just an entirely hot Vault then? What if we find a side door, open it, and— and— radiation!” Vaultie knows he’s getting too flustered for what should be bed time, the hushed voices having grown to plain talking. “And, besides. With a lot of radiation, there could be more than just ferals. There could be super mutants. You can’t fight on your own.”

“I can’t?”

“No.” They fall silent. Vaultie squirms, his voice back to a whisper. “Look. Just because Rothchild suggested it... it’s not a good idea.”

Charon sighs. He leans in, pressing dry lips to Vaultie’s temple. “I do not trust them.”

Vaultie turns, sighing, suddenly feeling guilt. Rothchild was possibly right, that Charon could go by himself, take the G.E.C.K., and come back safely. He just didn’t want to take that chance with Charon, and couldn’t bring that up to a member of the Brotherhood. “I... well. Some, yeah. Some people, they don’t really have the best... the best for everyone. But? Elder Lyon’s does. And he’s the one in charge.”

Charon grunts. “For now.” When Vaultie furrows his eyebrows, he responds, “He is old. I am sure they have plenty of pre-war technology at their disposal. But all humans die, eventually.” His eyes glint in the low light, searching Vaultie’s face, his own twisted in thought. “He is... how old? One hundred, about?”

Vaultie laughs, rolling onto his back to stare up at the ceiling, his eyes focusing on the small bits of sky he can see through the corroded tin. “No, he’s... no. Definitely not that old. Maybe, seventies? People don’t live...” His voice grows small as soon as he turns to face Charon again; there’s something wrong with his expression, something he can’t exactly put his finger on, lips parted and too still. He feels like he’s just been caught in a lie, except he obviously isn’t lying, or not trying to, at least. Lyons can’t be older than mid-seventies, maybe eighty, max, and he could even be in his sixties if that’s just the way he aged.

As soon as Charon has noticed his voice trailing, though, it’s gone, replaced by his usual, guarded look, though his eyes seem brighter in the pinpricks of light streaming in, the floodlights around Megaton’s walls and the neon signs that are welded to the side of The Brass Lantern. “No, no.” He grunts, apologetic, “I— forgot. You’re right. Seventy sounds fair.”

Vaultie swallows. “He could be older.”

“But,” He tilts his head back, still looking at Vaultie, as if trying to take in the entire sight of him. “Probably not.”

They’re quiet. Vaultie looks away, towards the ceiling again. He lets his eyes fall close, if only because he knows he should get some sleep, even if suddenly he doesn’t feel like it, feeling strangely nauseous.

He blinks his eyes open. Charon is straddling his body, careful not to actually lean any weight against him. When Charon kisses him he melts down into the bed, lets Charon shift some of his weight on him, pleasantly warm and present against his body. Ghoul body heat was intoxicating, the way it sunk into your bones, body humming. Charon presses his tongue in, and Vaultie opens his mouth, groaning.

“Oh—“ Vaultie reaches down, towards Charon’s groin, but he gently takes him by the wrist before he touches.

“Not me, not tonight,” He murmurs low. He has no shame in admitting the weaknesses that radiation brings, never has, and even though Vaultie’s gotten better at not feeling guilty it still worms its way into his stomach, a little.

“Okay,” He lets his arm relax and Charon’s grip releases on his hand.

Charon’s eyebrows rise, reassuringly, as he pulls his body back to kiss at Vaultie’s neck. And then, he trails downward, to his shoulders, his breast bone, peeling back the sheets as he goes. Charon kisses one nipple, humming when he squirms, and flicks his tongue over it. And then, he switches to the other side, sucking on his nipple, the other hand rolling the nub between big fingers. The pressure is just perfect, clumsy and firm, and he’s pulling sighs and squirms from his body.

His mouth lowers. He peppers kisses to his stomach, his hip bones. Vaultie’s cock is so hard, and Charon’s chin bumps against it as he goes lower, to bite wetly at his thigh, suck a kiss against his skin there.

It’s torturing him. He needs more— Vaultie makes a strangled sound as Charon ducks down, even further, grabbing Vaultie’s thighs. His thighs easily find their way over Charon’s shoulders, heels bumping against a bumpy ridge of his spine. He feels hot all over, too hot, like he’s about to combust. Charon’s breath ghosts warm against his ass; he barely has time to register before he can feel him biting his left cheek, just hard enough that it makes his toes flex and his legs shiver. “Charon—“

He bites again, and again, following with his tongue and kisses. With one hand, he spreads his ass, glancing up briefly at Vaultie’s face before he presses in, licks a wet stripe across his hole. Vaultie shouts. Charon’s pupils are fat, zoned out as he pushes his face between and licks again, and again. Vaultie wants to touch his cock but he’s afraid he’s going to come just to this— this, Charon’s tongue pushing in briefly, the way he moans into his flesh— he wants more.

“Please— so.” He’s breathless, between moans. The rough pads of Charon’s fingers are playing with the soft hair of his thigh, almost lazily, “S-so good.”

Vaultie finally gives in to touching himself, trying not to concentrate on the way Charon’s eyes shift in the dark, watching him, his body. Moving from his thigh, upward, his free hand cups his other cheek briefly before pressing his pointer finger in, next to his tongue. He barely thrusts in more than the tip, just to the first knuckle, and it’s sending electricity up his spine, makes him almost itch for more, the thrill of it and slight burn— and then Vaultie is coming hard between his fingers.  
  
He keeps moving his tongue, and his finger; the immediate relaxation of his muscles after lets Charon press in just a little further, a little deeper, and Vaultie’s body wracks with shivers, his cock giving a half-hearted twitch against his stomach. He swears he could get hard again just from the soft, wet noises of Charon’s mouth, but his body is starting to get overly sensitive, and he has to gently push Charon’s head back, too boneless to properly vocalize. Charon hums as he pulls away from Vaultie’s body, gently lowering his bottom half to the mattress. He looks so pleased, still rubbing his thumb in slow, circular motions against the side of his thigh, gazing over Vaultie with quiet eyes. He does that— just looks him over— and just as Vaultie’s quiet pants are starting to get under control, he pulls back, his lips quirking when he makes eye contact with Vaultie’s bleary face.

“I am going to grab a glass of water.”

The blankets fall back as Charon leaves the bed, and the room, and Vaultie manages to pull them back up, curled underneath them. He’s asleep before he feels the mattress dip next to him, the press of a body against his back and arms pulling him close.

—

It’s not hard to find Little Lamplight. Rothchild had the location of Vault 87 uploaded to his Pip-boy; the caverns were about south of that. They walk to the entrance of Vault 101, and head north from there, making sure to give Evergreen Mills a wide berth. They know they’re walking in the right direction when they pass Smith Casey’s Garage, though Vaultie doesn’t look at it straight on.

It’s dusk by the time they’re in the general vicinity. Vaultie’s nose is buried in his Pip-Boy; the technology still in place, whichever satellites that still orbit around the earth alone, can sometimes pick up their location. Other times, he won’t appear on the map, or they can be miles off.

Charon’s still better at reading the landscape, and traditional maps. Anchorage had maps, but the simulation had been entirely contained, and none of the practical knowledge ever really stuck when Vaultie knew he’d bump into a shimmering wall if he wandered too far. Charon taps his shoulder; there are small lights, Christmas lights, on the horizon, multiple strings of them hung up between a rocky outcrop and some mostly dilapidated prewar structures. They take care when approaching, but there are no signs of movement, not even a radscorpion amongst the rocks, and there’s nobody in the crow’s nest perched above all the other buildings. Charon can’t see a working ladder, but that doesn’t mean it’s not hidden.

All the buildings are either completely open or boarded over. The one that is still slightly intact has no windows. “Someone has been here recently.” The shack is sparse, but there are traces of care in it. The couch is rough, but still intact. There’s boxed food tucked away, semi-hidden but not forgotten. It’s not entirely abandoned, at least.

Vaultie carefully picks his steps, as if he’s potentially tromping through someone’s home, “Raiders, do you think?”

“Perhaps.” Charon pulls open a drawer, spare bullets clanking and rolling around as casually as pens in an old school desk; none of them are usable with their weapons, though, so he closes it without taking any.

“We’re not far from Evergreen Mills.” Vaultie mutters with a frown, heart sinking. He shouldn’t have expected this to be easy, but— he had hoped, maybe.

They leave the shack, Charon trailing behind Vaultie. There’s a door wedged in the mouth of the cave. Charon waits to the side, out of direct line of sight of the door, as Vaultie crouches and eases it open. The tunnels are lit, but empty. But gestures, and Charon follows, crouched, behind.

Charon flinches back when his arm brushes against the side of the cave wall, slick and cool. There’s junk piled in some corners as the tunnel twists down, and the temperature is steadily dropping the further they walk.

Vaultie holds out an arm. They stop. Ahead, the tunnel has opened up into a cave, and there’s a cobbled together junk fence and a gate made from a Lamplight Caverns billboard, the kind they had seen outside near the shacks. It’s been graffitied over, though, not in the way raiders liked to; more childlike handwriting, _DON’T visit Lamplight Caverns_! If Vaultie wasn’t mistaken, the guard at the gate was a child. He was too small, too petite to be fully grown.

They both walk forward. No, it is a child. Vaultie can hear Charon scoff. He wouldn’t even come up to Vaultie’s chest. He probably wouldn’t even come up to Charon’s waist.

“Yeah?! Who goes there?!”

The kid must have heard them. Sounds and voices echo in here. Charon edges forward, and the kid swings his gun towards him, eyes wide. “What the hell! Ugly mungo!”

Vaultie stands. The kid jumps back as soon as he apparates into view; he almost falls off the platform, but manages to catch himself last minute, overcorrecting before the excess weight of his armor tips him off from his guard post entirely. “Hold it—! Hold it right there mister!” His helmet is askew, covering his eyes, and he has to pause to push it back up onto his head. “Don’t take another step, or we’ll blow your fucking head off!”

Charon looks from the kid, to Vaultie. And then once more. Before, finally, looking at Vaultie and telling him, “You’re kidding.” As if it was his idea to install a very small, foul-mouthed child as guard.

“Uh—“

“I ain’t kidding!” The kid shouts, drawing back their attention to him with a stamp of his foot against the walkway, “And you’re not supposed to be here. You need to leave.” The gun in his hands is still too big, even though it looks like half of the stock has been shaved off to fit in the grasp of small hands and slung over narrow, pre-pubescent shoulders.

“I, uh.” There are no adults in sight, but Vaultie does try to crane his neck to look over the gate, jury rigged and graffitied billboard. It’s futile; he can’t see a thing, though he does notice that there’s more lights leading past. There has to be more people here. He tries, “Hey, uhm. Kid, sport? Where’s your parents?”

“Kid?? Sport?” He repeats the words like he’s just tasted dog shit. “Who the fuck are you calling sport, you crusty bug-mungo? My name’s MacCready to you. Mayor MacCready.”

“We’re— we promise, we’re a friend.”

“You’re big, and I don’t have any big friends. You better just go out the way you came in.”

“I really— I really need to get to Vault 87. Do you know the way?”

MacCready sniffs in distaste, but there’s a little fear in his eyes at the mention of it. “You don’t want to go there. That’s where the monsters are. We got pretty good at keeping them out. Probably better than you could do. The big ones, you know the ones that sort of look like people except they’re all wrong—“ He pauses, gesturing his gun towards Charon. “Not like you. Kind of, but bigger. And greener.”

Charon nods, unoffended. “Super mutants.”

“Please, we really need to get into there. We won’t... we won’t bother you.”

“Why should I trust you?” MacCready scoffs, “And what’s the point if all you wanna do is go down there and get yourself killed? I’m probably doing you a favor, not letting you in.”

“We’ve dealt with them, before. We— we’ve killed a lot of them.”

“We’ve dealt with them before. We’ve killed a lot of them.” MacCready parrots back in falsetto, and then sticks out his tongue. “Save it, ass cheeks. I’ve heard this song and dance from all kinds of mungos. And guess what? You’re all still a bunch of butt-licking mungos.” With his free hand, he points towards the exit. “Get out of here. I don’t want to see you back. Got it?”

Vaultie takes a step forward, “We need...”

But MacCready is righting his rifle again, and Vaultie stops, lifting his hands palms up. “Okay. O-okay. Fine.” They need to regroup, rethink. Maybe see if the entrance of Vault 87 is actually as irradiated as Rothchild says it is. He backs up, still facing MacCready. “We’re going. We’ll...” He nods at Charon, turning nervously, too aware of a rifle manned by tiny fingers pointed at his back. “Come on, Charon. Let’s go.”

The entrance to Vault 87 is too irradiated. They can only get so far, between the super mutants and centaurs crawling all over, and the dull thump of radiation like a migraine in Vaultie’s head, even after taking double the dose of rad-x pills. He vomits in his own helmet and Charon won’t move any further, exposed in the open wastes, until Vaultie agrees to turn around. Lamplight is the only way to go.

The next day, they try to get into Little Lamplight, and Mayor MacCready makes Vaultie cry. He’s in no mood to entertain them again after he’s told them once to scram. It's not outright sobbing, but he knows by the way Charon is leaning in towards him that he hears the sniffles and can see the wetness in his eyes that glints in the dimness of the cave, betraying him before he can duck his head to wrestle on his helmet.

"Are you crying?" MacCready’s pre-pubescent voice cracks, incessant, "Big ol' mungo baby gonna cry?"

"Aren't you... Y-you're only, only ten--"

"Yuh yuh yuh you're only stupid!" MacCready shouts back, mimicking his stutter with the unique vindictiveness only a child can harness. He doesn’t focus on Charon, as if he somehow knows that words wouldn’t effect him in the slightest. Vaultie is scrambling to thrust his helmet back on his head, but he drops it in the dirt, and nearly trips over his feet to grab it before it rolls off into a stagnant puddle.

“What can we do to get you to let us in?” Charon grunts, trying to pull MacCready’s laser focus away. Vaultie had told him, under no circumstances, were they to use force.

“Make it worth our while. Which, you can’t.” The amount of sass this kid has is egregious. “Unless...”

“Unless...?” Charon growls, annoyed.

“Unless, some of our friends recently got picked up by slavers while out scavving. Those gross fuckin’ mungos still have them at Paradise Falls, but they can’t escape, ‘cause of the collars. If you got them out, maybe I’d let you in.”

“Paradise Falls? We can’t...” Vaultie shakes his head. “W-we can’t go there. They’ll kill us on sight. They know us—“

MacCready raises his weapon just as Charon steps in front of Vaultie. “I knew it! You two are slavers!”

“N-no!”

“Relax,” Charon snaps.

“We’re not, we’re not. I swear, it’s just, they know who we are. From Three Dog.” And from that period where Vaultie had been trying to help everyone in the wasteland at a manic rate. The man at the front may remember him, but it had been months ago. The collars and Mesmetron were surely still sitting in one of the abandoned houses of Minefield. “At least, the radio, he talks about us, and I can sneak in but, not Charon.”

MacCready’s eyes are narrowing. He lowers his gun slightly, staring at them hard. “Then, you just sneak in.”

Vaultie opens his mouth to speak, but Charon surprises him: “We don’t operate like that. Together, or neither of us go.”

Vaultie is nodding, and too glad for his helmet; he feels prickly and emotional from MacCready’s taunts, like radio static, and everything must be feeling overly sensitive because that feels like one of the most romantic things Charon has ever said, to speak up for them like that. Still half-hidden behind him, he reaches up just to briefly touch the small of his back.

“Yeah,” His voice is softer than he means to. “Sorry.”

“I’m not.” Charon grunts, glancing back at Vaultie. “I’m sick of this...” Charon usually thinks what he says over, but his frustration is leaving him grasping for insults, jabbing a finger in the air towards MacCready, “This... mouthy baby.”

“Hey, ugly! You’re a mouthy baby.” MacCready shouts, “Don’t even try it. Your face is too ugly for a momma to even love, you know that?”

Charon’s nostrils flare. “Your face...” He closes his mouth, and then points his finger, again: “Looks like my butt.”

MacCready is suddenly, inexplicably, grinning, hand on his canted hip, “Your butt must be handsome, then.”

Charon pauses, and then tilts his head, speaking in his usual monotone, “That is what your mother said to me the other day.”

There’s a tiny chorus of ooohs that are piping up from behind the gate, where a crowd must have gathered on hearing the commotion. MacCready just starts laughing. “Damn! You’re pretty funny, for a mungo.”

Charon crosses his arms over his chest. “So? Will you let us in?”

“We can help in other ways!”

MacCready’s eyes narrow, like he just remembered Vaultie was still there. He sighs. “Ugh. Fine. I’m letting you—“ He points at Charon, “In, ‘cause you’re cool.” He glares at Vaultie. “But I got my eye on you. I ain’t having no shit-butts making trouble.”

The mechanics of the gate screech as they grind open. Vaultie looks at Charon, dumbstruck, as he walks in. It takes him a moment before he remembers to move, following up behind Charon and grabbing his elbow. MacCready is standing in the entrance. “I’m serious. You better not be lying about being good, or else we’ll shoot you.” He nods to a group of kids in the corner of the cave; they’re a rag tag bunch. There’s a tall one whose birthday hat is just making him look even taller and more out of place. Their attention keeps being pulled from him, to MacCready, to giggling and pointing at the two of them. “Princess can help you open the Murder Pass gate, or you can ask Joseph about the computer into the vault door. But, you’re probably not smart enough to crack that.”

Charon huffs out a sigh, something of an exasperated laugh. Vaultie just nods. MacCready levels one last stink eye as sternly as he can muster from four feet off the ground, before marching back towards the stairs and his post at the gate.

Charon turns to Vaultie. “Let’s find Joseph.”

“How...?” His mind still hasn’t caught up, yet. “Where did that even... what?”

Charon doesn’t answer; he almost looks a little embarrassed, and also a little pleased. Vaultie just sort of holds his hands up, stutters, and then drops them.

—

The kids of Lamplight are just that— children. Not all of them are as foul-mouthed as MacCready, not even half of them. Most are initially shy, if slightly playful. They love to gather behind Charon, whispering and giggling, until he turns around to look at them and then they run away with shrieks of mock terror.

“Hey, tall guy,” Eclair is stirring the pot on the stove top. He glances up at Charon; his left eye is damaged, the eyelid drooping with a heavy scar. It doesn’t help his frown. “You both get one portion a day, and you’re paying double no matter what you order, remember that.”

“Fungus and something non-fungus.” Charon answers. Vaultie can’t stomach it. He tried, he really did. They promised, next time they were back— hopefully, with Sammy and Squirrel and Penny and the other kids— that they would bring buffout to help the fungus grow better. That’s what the kids eat, apparently. The smell alone turns his stomach.

Charon could care less. He brings a bowl of the heated through fungus along with a dented tube of potato crisps to the table. They’re sitting at the biggest table they have, which, isn’t that big, especially compared to Charon’s stooped frame. He’s so tall, he keeps bumping his head against stalagmites. They’re supposed to be meeting with Joseph, to discuss taking the more direct route through the far end of the cavern, and bypassing Murder Pass entirely, which is why they’re sitting at a table with three seats.

“How can you eat that?” Charon had given up using a fork to scoop the cave fungus up; there’s something gelatinous about its texture in that it doesn’t want to be pierced, but it’s also too solid for the use of a spoon, so he’s using his fingers and eating directly over the bowl so that anything that slips with a squelch from his hands wont fall through the floor into the water below. “Is it good?”

Charon stares at Vaultie, straight-faced. “Oh, no. It’s disgusting.”

Vaultie laughs.

Two children run by, squealing. They nearly bump into a taller kid, who shoos them off as he crosses the bridge walking towards them. “Well, now, here’s something new. MacCready didn’t tell me you guys were big and old.” Joseph is slight, but clearly older than the majority of the kids they’ve seen around the caverns, post-puberty. He’s carrying a set of books under one arm. He sits in the third chair at the table, next to Vaultie. “What’s a grown-up like you doing in Little Lamplight?”

“I’m Adam.” He holds out a hand. Joseph looks startled, but he takes it, shaking it. His grip is unsure. “And this is Charon. We’re, uh, from Megaton.”

Charon grunts between a mouthful of fungus.

Joseph shrugs. “I’m Joseph, and as the oldest kid in Lamplight, I’m pretty much a teacher by default. I also try to keep the kids clean and fresh-faced.” He clears his throat, leaning back, “Eclair! I’ll have your finest mycelium, cubed and served in a savory sauce!”

Even from a distance, Vaultie can see Eclair roll his eye, but he’s still cooking something. Joseph scoffs, setting his books down in front of him. “He’s so moody, even for a thirteen year-old. Cooking for the kids isn’t the worst job here. He could be on scavenging duty.”

Vaultie is nearing the end of his whole crisps; the rest are practically crumbs, about a third of the tube. “How old are you?”

Joseph’s face scrunches. “Fifteen.”

“Oh... when do you have to leave?”

“Sixteen.”

Eclair comes out from the Spelunker’s shack with Joseph’s fungus in a bowl. It looks identical to what Charon is eating. Before Vaultie can even offer, Charon is shoving caps into Eclair’s hand for Joseph. He takes it with a scowl and stalks back over to his stove.

Joseph nods, “Thanks. So, MacCready told me you guys wanted to see me?”

Even at only fifteen, he seems more mature than Vaultie remembers himself being at that age, so sure of himself. “We need to get into the Vault.” Vaultie explains.

“But we don’t want to take Murder Pass.” Charon grunts.

“I don’t blame you.” Joseph says. He pokes at his fungus with a fork. “I mean... I can get you to the door. But not much else.”

“The door doesn’t work?”

“Nun-uh. Door works fine. Computer’s broke.” Joseph shrugs, “Well, maybe not broke, but it sure don’t work right. I turned it off because it was just wasting power.”

“Oh,” Vaultie nods. “Smart.”

Joseph looks caught off-guard, like he’s sure Vaultie’s actually taunting him for a moment. But then he flashes a brief smile. “Yeah, thanks. Someone around here has to be!”

Vaultie’s given up on eating politely; Charon doesn’t care, and Joseph is eating similar to how Charon is, the bowl directly under his chin, but he’s much more deft with using a fork than him. He tries to coat his fingers with chip crumbs and lick them clean. “So, um-can you turn the computer back on, then?”

“Of course. I’ll take you there, after. Maybe you’ll have more luck...” He doesn’t sound entirely convinced, looking them both up and down. Vaultie suddenly feels self conscious eating like this. Joseph’s eyes settle on his neck, where the high collar of his vault suit is peaking out from the edge of his armor. “Oh, hey. Is that a vault suit?”

“Yeah. Uh, 101, though. Not this one.”

“Huh...” Joseph trails off, before opening one of his books on the table. There’s a pen tucked inside the spine that he picks up, jotting something down in the margins. “I didn’t realize there were still some vaults that had, you know, people and stuff in them still. ‘Cause you’re old, but you’re not that old. That’s neat.” He puts his pen down. “Maybe you’ll have a chance of getting in then, I guess.”

It doesn’t take long to finish their food. Joseph leaves his books and bowl at the table, so Vaultie and Charon do the same, following right behind them. There are wooden signs staked into the ground throughout Little Lamplight, but Vaultie can easily see himself getting lost in here. The rooms are large, but the tunneling hallways inbetween are narrow and maze-like. He’s nearly stepped on a few kids or wayward dog paws.

They follow in a tight line behind Joseph. “The computer is just past the Great Hall,” Joseph mentions, leading them forward. Even Charon, momentarily able to stand straight, has to look up at the lights shining. He can’t tell if it was the kids who put them all up on the ceiling, or if they’d been this way since before the war. There are so many different lights, large, hanging globes, strings of Christmas lights, bare bulbs, flickering neon signs stapled haphazardly to walls. All of the huts are on stilts above the water; if the lights weren’t so awe-inspiring, Vaultie would be worried about how high up he is, and the way the rope bridges are creaking underneath their heavy tread. “Nobody ever wrote it down, and then one day somebody forgot. You know how it goes... Sometimes, they used to send really tough teams into the vault, just a little bit, to scav. But then it got too dangerous, and nobody wanted to go anymore, and so it wasn’t important to remember.”

“Makes, uh, sense,” Vaultie mumbles, distracted. It’s truly a whole city under here. He can see kids in some of the little shacks, resting on beds, reading comic books, playing with their dogs.

He’s almost sad to have to keep walking. They take a rope bridge to the other side, and Joseph slows his step as the ground starts to slope downward. He turns, stepping over an old, knee-high KEEP OUT sign from Vault-Tec, passing the rusted skeletons of shopping carts and assorted trash that had been thrown behind the small barricade.

“It’s this way. Watch your step.”

The cave opens up again, but not by much. They have to duck through a hole in a chain link fence before Vaultie can see the side of a Vault sticking out of the rock, looking as if the metal entryway had burst, natural, from the walls. Joseph leads them to right underneath the stairs, to a fuse box.

He pulls out a pair of glasses from his pocket. They’ve clearly been taped and fixed again and again over the years, and they’re about a size too big for Joseph’s head when he perches it on the edge of his nose. “Alright, let me connect the wires.” The way he reaches in makes Vaultie’s stomach flop. He doesn’t seem too concerned, grabbing one wire, and then another, “Then you can have a go at the computer. Don’t say I didn’t warn you about how hard it is, though.”

Charon peers over Joseph’s shoulder, squinting in the low light. It takes him less than a minute to get it all hooked up. He turns to them. “Listen, I’ll keep this connected for tonight. Tomorrow morning, I’ll come back. I’ll probably find you here and turn it off, but—“ He frowns, crossing his arms over his chest. “If you’re gone, I’ll leave it connected. I’m only giving you two days, though. Any longer, you’re definitely mutie meat, and I’m giving you up for dead.”

Vaultie nods. “Okay.”

“Good.” He pulls the glasses off his face, tucking them back into his back pocket. “Good luck, you guys.”

He leaves the way they came, through the chain link fence. Vaultie and Charon take the metal steps up, into the side of the Vault. The computer is blinking, slowly booting up back to life. Charon gives the door a slight tap as he settles in at the keyboard, just to double check it hadn’t opened with just the restart of the system.

“Nothing.” Charon mutters. Vaultie sighs.

“Okay, it’s— system’s up.”

Maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised, but the computer isn’t very hard to hack into. Vaultie wouldn’t consider himself the best, but this isn’t his hardest terminal to crack; he remembers Ahzrukhal’s even being harder than this.

“You know I— I thought this would be more difficult.” Vaultie mumbles. He can see Charon’s reflexion in the screen, and the green numbers reflecting back from his own visor. It only takes him brute restarting the system and putting it into safe mode before he bypasses RobCo’s default protections, and then the entire system opens up for him, line after line of potential commands popping up onscreen. He’s already in the system.

“They’re just children,” Charon hums, moving closer to peer over his shoulder, “Even if they’re adults in other aspects.”

Vaultie pulls away from the keyboard, pressing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, grinding until he sees sparks behind his eyelids. “I just... You don’t think the mutants could get through this door after we’ve unlocked it, right? I can’t... what if.” He keeps his hands there, lets his head rest. “I don’t want...”

Charon touches his back, between his shoulder planes, very gently. “That won’t happen.”

Vaultie nods, with his hands still in his eyes. He takes in a short breath. He pulls his hands away and goes to the keyboard, opening the door.

“Are you ready?”

\--

Their usual formation— Vaultie at the front, silencing single mutants, or drawing out groups so that Charon can bring up the rear and clean up after— works like a symphony in the narrow halls of a vault, funneling super mutants effortlessly into their line of fire. Still, it’s exhausting, and the mutants here seem sturdier than the ones they face downtown, somehow. If Vaultie doesn’t aim right, it takes Charon at least three pumps of his gun to finish one off.

When the living quarter’s doors close behind them, and they pause to check and double check nothing is nearby, Vaultie raises his Pip-Boy to his face, the light of it shining through the cloak. He had downloaded an old map from the terminal in the citadel; apparently, the scribes had tried before, but the files weren’t actually compatible with reading on a terminal, and they hadn’t found someone else with a Pip-Boy to read them until Adam had come along. Having the maps of a majority of the vaults helped him and the Brotherhood’s records.

(Though, at the time, all he could think of was the corpse in the Bailey’s Crossroads Outpost, the arm sawed off in frustration, blood stained against the tile floors. But he hadn’t found a body anywhere in the Citadel, no partially crushed Pip-Boys attached to greying arms. He had told Charon that they were better than the Outcasts; that’s why they were doing this.)

They’re close. He closes the map, putting his Pip-Boys screen back into sleep mode. Vaultie taps against a doorway. Down here, the emergency lighting of the Vault has tripped on, and everything is awash in the red glow. It’s making the edges of the stealth cloak show up more than he’s comfortable with.

They slowly make their way down the hall. Around the corner, he stops sudden at the sight of a super mutant’s face. He pulls back, raising his rifle, and then realizes that he’s behind glass. In fact, he’s in a holding cell; he knows from experience what type of vault door that was, where it was used in a vault.

So, he can’t reach the mutant, but neither can he reach them. Vaultie taps— avoid, walk pass— and continues down the hall.

“You!”

Vaultie shivers under the red light, spinning to stare at Charon. Just because the door was locked, and the mutant couldn’t harm them, didn’t mean Charon had to be so clumsy sneaking— But he starts to speak, and not shouted warnings to his brothers: “It can’t be! Either you, are quite real, or I am quite mad.”

The mutant speaks like he’s reciting aloud from a book he’s never read before, stilted and stressing the wrong words, his voice pitching indiscriminate of actual meaning. He presses his large hands against the glass; his palms could easily fit Vaultie’s head in them, crush him easier than a bug. “Could you actually be a pure human?”

He’s squinting, or at least, Vaultie thinks he is; he’s not usually this close to mutants unless they’re dead, and with their heavy brows and contorted faces it’s hard to read their expressions. Between the two of them, they must not look human. Vaultie realizes, though, that the mutant cannot see him through the muck of the glass crouched like this. When he stands, the mutant flinches away on instinct.

“We’re human.” Vaultie says.

The mutant seems to sigh, then taps towards the side of the window with one hand, the intercom fizzling to life: “You have to press the button, to speak.”

He reaches out, before Charon can, repeating, “We’re human.”

Charon hisses, eyes darting, “This is not safe.”

The mutant perks. “Forgive me, but I’m not used to pleasantries. I’m more used to grunts and being struck around by others— My name’s Fawkes.”

“I’m the Lo— Adam. I’m Adam. And Charon.”

“Leave him— leave this. We should go. We are wasting time.”

“No!” Fawkes presses himself to the window, “No, please. I haven’t had a civil conversation all my life! Don’t go! I could help you!”

Vaultie glances at Charon, his outward annoyance mollified with shock. “Help?” Charon meets Vaultie’s gaze, through the helmet, “With what, exactly?”

“The G.E.C.K. Surely, you too, are looking for it.”

“The G.E.C.K.?” Vaultie knows he’s speaking too loud, as soon as the words leave his mouth, “What’s that?”

Fawkes smiles, or something close to it. “I read a tape once on how to tell if someone’s lying, and I must say,” He taps his finger against the window. “You’re a terrible liar. Why else would you be in this horrible place if it wasn’t to get it? People before you have tired and failed many times. However, you’re in luck. I know where it is and, best of all, I know how you can get your hands on it.”

“How?” Vaultie mumbles, chagrined.

Fawke’s shakes his head. “Not so fast. Quid pro quo, my friend. If I’m to do this service for you, I expect to get something in return. Release me from this makeshift prison and I will personally take you to the G.E.C.K. And retrieve it for you.”

Vaultie says, “Of course,” at the same moment Charon snorts, “Not a chance.”

Vaultie turns, “Charon—“

Charon deadpans, "Yes, I recommend you, in good conscious, to open that door and allow a clever super mutant out to murder us both."

Vaultie lifts the heel of his palm off the intercom button halfway through Charon's sarcasm; through the foggy glass, Fawke's expression doesn't change, somehow conveying a note of calm even with the perpetual grimace the straps at his mouth force. If he heard Charon, he does not show it, but Vaultie feels his ears heating up all the same, lowering his voice to a whisper, "I'm serious. He can help us."

Charon frowns. "You can't see any fault in letting him go? Why would he help us? What has he to gain?"

Vaultie's fingers drum nervous patterns against the intercom, too light to indent the button. "It’s not... he’s obviously not a usual super mutant. He... h-he speaks."

"And if a deathclaw were to speak?" Charon asks.

Vaultie sighs, looking anywhere but Charon's face. "Not... The point... But," His voice turns sheepish, lost under the heft of Charon's heavy sigh. "Probably." Charon's frown deepens, and Vaultie whines, "If he was that well spoken!" He turns his back to Fawkes now, facing Charon fully. “Besides, what if we freed him, and he can help us get the G.E.C.K.?”

“We can retrieve it ourselves. How difficult could it be?”

“Difficult enough that other people—“ Vaultie can feel his voice raising too much, and he drops his tone back to a whisper, “Other people have died trying to get it.”

“He’s just saying that, so we release him,” Charon grunts, but even Vaultie can tell he’s not entirely convinced himself, adding on, “We’re not like other people.”

Fawkes taps against the window again, gently, though Vaultie can feel the vibrations of his strength through the window against his back and it makes him jump. “I cannot hear you two, though if I may interject, I imagine your conversation has something to do with a cost-benefit analysis. My help is needed. The chamber in which the G.E.C.K. resides is absolutely flooded with radiation. It’s unlikely you’d survive very long. Myself, on the other hand, have surprisingly inherited a useful trait from my fellow...” He pauses, “Meta Humans. I am highly resistant to radiation.”

Charon reaches out, pressing Vaultie’s hand into the intercom button. “I’m a ghoul. We’re just as resistant as mutants.”

Fawkes flinches at the word mutant, but he seems more interested in Charon’s classification to protest. “A ghoul? Are you both?” Vaultie shakes his head. Fawkes sighs, “Well. I do not know what resistance your type has. But I do know if you let me out of here, I will place the G.E.C.K. safely in your hands.”

Charon lifts his hand, turning back to Vaultie once more, “I could get the G.E.C.K.”

Vaultie pulls back, away from the intercom, tucking himself against the wall. “You... you could.” Vaultie sounds hesitant. “You could. But... listen. We could have him do it. The supermut— meta human. I think— he’s already as irradiated as he’s going to get, right?”

“The threat of a super mutant at our backs—“

“Is a risk I’m willing to take.” Vaultie’s voice is soft, but firm. “Because you getting more irradiated isn’t— it isn’t like that, as simple as a super mutant, right? I think. You could... you could turn.”

Charon looks away. “It does not work like that.”

“That’s— I don’t know. Patches...”

“Patches is an idiot.” Charon almost looks apologetic, after he says it, like he hadn’t really meant it. But it’s gone in an instant, gesturing towards Fawke’s, “Who’s to say the radiation won’t make this one into a slobbering mutant like the rest?”

“I don’t know.” Vaultie mutters, “Who’s to say it won’t happen to you?”

They both fall silent. Vaultie knows they don’t have the time to really argue out their points, not this deep into the vault; a mutant could turn the corner at any moment and catch them unawares.

Super mutant’s features do not give themselves easily to humanlike expressions, with their small eyes and weak brows, but he does look slightly surprised when Charon steps up to the intercom, hips lightly nudging Vaultie even as he steps aside. He presses down on the button until it crackles to life. "Fawkes?"

"Yes?"

Charon heaves such a world-weary sigh it takes over the intercom, crinkling like tinfoil through the speakers. "We're going to let you out. I need slow movements."

Fawke’s eyes crinkle in the corners. “That is wonderful to hear. Please, at the end of the hallway— on your right, there is a utility closet with an emergency shut-down system for all of the cells.”

Vaultie is already pulling up his Pip-Boy.

Charon squints. “At the end of the hallway? So, you’re leading us into an ambush—“

“No,” Fawkes shakes his head, “I can tell you, there will be at least two of my brethren there. Kill them if you must. Or, the invisible one can go in, and trip the alarm.”

Charon lets go of the intercom’s call button, turning to Vaultie. He nods, then disappears. Charon follows. The hallway is lined with more cell doors. Some are empty; some have centaurs. One even has a live man, who doesn’t seem to see Charon, even when he looks at him; he just runs around in circles, and screams.

Turning right, the hall ends with the utility closet. Vaultie slips in first, shooting one shot smoothly through a super mutant’s head; the other, in the nearer corner, bellows and raises his gun, but Charon follows in right after, two shotgun blows to the stomach. It’s not a killing hit, but it staggers him from the impact, just enough time for Vaultie to have finished reloading and splitting the back of his head in two.

The emergency door override is next to the last mutant, a lever mounted on the wall. Out of the corner of Vautie’s eye, he notices another terminal, though— he signals for Charon to stop before he can pull the override. This will be much smoother. He unlocks what he thinks is Fawkes door, the last one, 5. The other cells, with the man screaming at the window, can stay shut. Vaultie reloads his gun. He stands, walking fast, Charon trailing behind them. He’s relieved to see he guessed correctly; Fawkes is standing in the doorway, cradling a super sledge. And for a moment, Vaultie is truly afraid, seeing his entire stature in front of him, without glass in the way.

“Thank you, friend!” Fawkes’ voice booms in the hallway. “I can lead you to the G.E.C.K. You will have it soon— this, I promise you.” He shifts his super sledge to one hand, and holds out the other. Charon is so on-edge it’s making Vaultie anxious, but he reaches out— as Charon hisses— and takes Fawkes’ giant hand, and shakes it. He holds his hand so daintily, two little shakes, before letting go. “There, the promise is sealed.”

Between the three of them, they easily clear out the rest of the supermutants in their path. Even a snarling Overlord is no match for Fawkes rushing in with his super sledge, followed by a well-placed shot to the skull and Charon sweeping in behind to make sure everyone was good and truly dead.

“This way, we’re almost there.” Fawkes’ calls.

A window to a hallway they pass is glowing so much from plasma that it momentarily stops Vaultie in his tracks. The walls are lead-lined and the glass reinforced, he knows from living in the Vault, but still, a part of him momentarily feels too on-edge to see all of the radiation glowing like that. It would have skinned what flesh was left off of Charon if he had gone through. Fawkes stops behind him.

“That’s the hallway to the G.E.C.K. Something happened, when the bombs fell, that broke the atomic generators.” He starts to walk, “The entrance is one room over.”

The last room only has one way to go. Fawkes pauses in front of the doorway, gripping the frame with one big hand. The light’s different in there, glowing faintly green, transforming him in the shadows. Vaultie takes an uneasy step back, and the heat radiating even from this far away. “I will be back, friends.”

They watch his back as he disappears down the hall. They don’t talk, but Vaultie takes Charon’s hand, quietly. He’s nervous. How could not a single other person wanting a G.E.C.K. have done this, help this nice super mutant out of his prison so that he could grab it? Or, maybe— that’s because this was all a trick, and Fawkes’ was actually going to come back with his brethren and catch them unaware. And what if—

Charon squeezes his hand. His thoughts stop.

Fawkes is carrying a small, slim briefcase when he turns the corner. It’s so incredibly monotone, a single, striking shining silver finish, without the mess or tarnish that he’s grown used to outside. It’s truly Vault-Tec, pre-war technology.

When Fawkes hands it over, placing it gently into his outstretched hands, he almost expects it to shimmer like the briefcases had in Anchorage.

Vaultie has never carried such a light suitcase in his life. He had thought something that could create a new earth would be much heavier, but the slick, metal handle feels hollow and so does the case itself. It almost felt entirely empty, but also strangely warm. When he presses his palm to it, it feels like a rock that’s sat out in the noon day sun, even though they’re multiple feet below the ground.

“Residual radiation,” Fawkes says, just as Vaultie’s pip-boy starts to eek out a slow, but steady stream of clicks. “Be careful.”

Charon is already folding his hand over Vaultie’s, the other grabbing the suitcase from the bottom. He lets go. “We will.”

Fawkes strays behind, almost forlornly. Charon and Vaultie exchange looks. They could ask him to accompany them, but this is too precious, too important. Instead, Vaultie turns back one last time. “Fawkes, maybe we will see you out in the wastes?”

He looks startled at his words, but nods, solemn. “Of course. Thank you, dear friends.”

They leave, stepping over the bodies of super mutants. Adam waits until they are out of earshot to hold the case out in front of him. “I… oh. Wow. I guess I thought…”

“It would look different?”

“I don’t know.” He turns it in his hands, watching the light reflect off the front. “It’s crazy to think— we could just open it and a forest... would pop out, I guess.”

Charon frowns. “Is that exactly how it works? How do we know it’s even in there?”

Vaultie bites his lip. “I, well. I’m not sure. I think, something like that. I’m not going to open it until I get it to the Brotherhood.” He shrugs his pack off his back, sliding the suitcase in snug towards the back, before closing it up tight and slinging it back over his shoulders. It will stay safe, closest to his own back, on their way back to the Citadel.

The Vault is quiet, Fawkes warning of others going unfulfilled. Vaultie keeps his sniper rifle out, but lowered. “We’re doubling back the way we came... I don’t think we’ll meet anything else.” He has to check the time on his Pip-Boy, and Charon leans in to read it with him; less than three hours, altogether. Maybe quick enough that none of the mutants that are in murder pass or the ones that inhabit the irradiated desolation of the vault entrance will notice their brothers’ absence and come to check in on them. “We did it.”

Charon nods. Vaultie pauses, fumbling with his helmet until the orange visor retracts back. Charon has to tilt his head, so Vaultie can kiss him, but it lands more on his chin than anywhere near his lips, the ridge of his nasal cavity bumping against the edge.

“We just need to take the stairs back up to the living quarters...” He sound so relieved, looking at him, all smiles. And Charon can’t help it, he’s smiling back, too. “And, maybe, we’ll just spend the night in Little Lamplight, if MacCready lets us, then head on out tomorrow morning?”

There’s a promise of more in that; snowballing from the G.E.C.K. to the Citadel and then, maybe, they’d be free to head back to Megaton, stop thinking about all of this water purifier nonsense. They would run out the Enclave from project purity themselves, and take it over for the Brotherhood, and Adam could forget his tenuous, unwanted claims to the basin and project.

“Sounds good.”

He’s still smiling as he slides his visor back down, and Charon follows behind as they walk. They pause before an open doorway, Vaultie peeking around the corners before they move on into the room.

Two grenades drop from the ceiling, one rolling to the corner, the other bouncing towards them; Vaultie recoils, but they do not explode in a shower of shrapnel. Instead, it’s a flash, a pulse of electricity and energy that zips up Charon’s spine like flame up a wick. Charon wants to shout his name, but his vocal chords are frozen, his body falling in a heap to the ground. He can feel it running through his body, his jaw locked up tight, leg spasming. His shotgun has fallen and skittered away against the floor, somewhere in the corner of the room.

Vaultie is on his knees, twitching, but trying to move, his face to the floor. His suit must have blocked some of the affects — the door is opening, and two Enclave soldiers stroll out, their armors rippling with the same blue lightning that is coursing through Charon’s nerves.

“The objective is secured, sir.”

Augustus Autumn follows out after. He kneels down next to Vaultie, too close, unconcerned about crowding his personal space; he knows they’re not a threat, whatever that grenade did to them. “Good work, soldier.” He reaches out, tilting Vaultie’s head up with a gloved hand. A growl is in Charon’s throat. “Make sure the G.E.C.K. is secured on my vertibird.”

“Yes sir. I’ll have the techs come down and remove it immediately, sir.”

“You’re certain he’s unharmed?” He twists his chin, his other hand touching the side of his head, his helmet, obviously trying to find where the visor unlocks.

“Yes sir. We calibrated it to be strong enough to bring him down, even in armor. He’ll pass out shortly, but we can revive him.”

“Excellent.” He pauses, letting Vaultie’s head drop. The sudden movement makes his arms wobble, and then he falls, fully, to the floor. The sound of his body hitting the tin floor makes Charon want to scream. “Prepare him for transport, immediately.”

“And...?” They gesture towards Charon.

Colonel Autumn barely spares him a look before turning, already walking towards the door. “Who cares. Leave him. We have more important things to focus on. Now hurry.”

The two soldiers lean down, each grabbing one of Vaultie’s arms. Charon feels his head throb; his vision blackens, and swallows him up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I would immensely appreciate any critiques or comments because after the long break I think my writing is very different from before, and I can’t tell if it’s good... or bad. I’m going to try and reply to everyone’s comments across all my fics before next update, and next update is soon, it’s 3/4 done.. Anyway, thanks for reading!


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